— _  _^^ 

OBITGR  DICT 


SECOND  SERIES 


LIBRARY 

University   of   California 

IRVINE 


OBITER   DICTA. 

(Second  Series.} 


Obiter  £)ttta. 

First  Series. 


CONTENTS. 


CARLYLE. 

ON  THE  ALLEGED  OBSCU- 
RITY OF  MR.  BROWN- 
ING'S POETRY. 

TRUTH  HUNTING. 


ACTORS. 

A  ROGUE'S  MEMOIRS. 

TIIE  VIA  MEDIA. 

FALSTAFF. 


OBITER    DICTA 


SECOND  SERIES 


BY 

AUGUSTINE  BIRRELL 


NEW  YORK 

CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 
1887 

Authorized  Edition 


mi 


The  Riverside  Press,  Cambridge '. 
Electrotyped  and  Printed  by  H.  O.  Houghton  &  Co» 


PREFACE. 

I  AM  sorry  not  to  have  been  able  to  per- 
suade my  old  friend,  George  Radford,  who 
wrote  the  paper  on  '  Falstaff '  in  the  former 
volume,  to  contribute  anything  to  the  sec- 
ond series  of  Obiter  Dicta.  In  order  to  en- 
joy the  pleasure  of  reading  your  own  books 
over  and  over  again,  it  is  essential  that  they 
should  be  written  either  wholly  or  in  part 
by  somebody  else. 

Critics  will  probably  be  found  ready  to 
assert  that  this  little  book  has  no  right  to 
exist,  since  it  exhibits  nothing  worthy  of 
the  name  of  research,  being  written  by  one 
who  has  never  been  inside  the  reading-room 
of  the  British  Museum.  Neither  does  it 
expound  any  theory,  save  the  unworthy 
one,  that  literature  ought  to  please ;  nor 
does  it  so  much  as  introduce  any  new  name 
or  forgotten  author  to  the  attention  of  what 
is  facetiously  called  'the  reading  public.' 


VI  PREFACE. 

But  I  shall  be  satisfied  with  a  mere  de 
facto  existence  for  the  book,  if  only  it  prove 
a  little  interesting  to  men  and  women  who, 
called  upon  to  pursue,  somewhat  too  rigor- 
ously for  their  liking,  their  daily  duties,  are 
glad,  every  now  and  again,  when  their  feet 
are  on  the  fender,  and  they  are  surrounded 
by  such  small  luxuries  as  their  theories  of 
life  will  allow  them  to  enjoy,  to  be  reminded 
of  things  they  once  knew  more  familiarly 
than  now,  of  books  they  once  had  by  heart, 
and  of  authors  they  must  ever  love. 

The  first  two  papers  are  here  printed  for 
the  first  time  ;  the  others  have  been  so 
treated  before,  and  now  reappear,  pulled 
about  a  little,  with  the  kind  permission  of 
the  proper  parties. 

NEW  SQUARE,  LINCOLN'S  INN, 
April,  1887. 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

I.   MILTON       .  .  .  .  .  .  .1 

II.   POPE 52 

III.  JOHNSON 109 

IV.  BURKE  i  149 
V.   THE   MUSE   OF    HISTORY    ....    196 

VI.   CHARLES   LAMB 224 

VII.   EMERSON 238 

VIII.   THE   OFFICE   OF   LITERATURE         .  .  256 

IX.   WORN-OUT   TYPES 265 

X.   CAMBRIDGE  AND  THE  POETS         .          .  275 

XI.   BOOK-BUYING 284 


JOHN   MILTON. 

IT  is  now  more  than  sixty  years  ago 
since  Mr.  Carlyle  took  occasion  to  observe, 
in  his  Life  of  Schiller,  that,  except  the 
Newgate  Calendar,  there  was  no  more  sick- 
ening reading  than  the  biographies  of  au- 
thors. 

Allowing  for  the  vivacity  of  the  compar- 
ison, and  only  remarking,  with  reference 
to  the  Newgate  Calendar,  that  its  com- 
pilers have  usually  been  very  inferior  wits, 
in  fact  attorneys,  it  must  be  owned  that 
great  creative  and  inventive  genius,  the 
most  brilliant  gifts  of  bright  fancy  and 
happy  expression,  and  a  glorious  imagina- 
tion, well-nigh  seeming  as  if  it  must  be 
inspired,  have  too  often  been  found  most 
unsuitably  lodged  in  ill-living  and  scanda- 
lous mortals.  Though  few  things,  even  in 
what  is  called  Literature,  are  more  disgust- 
ing than  to  hear  small  critics,  who  earn 


2  JOHN  MIL  TON. 

their  bite  and  sup  by  acting  as  the  self-ap- 
pointed showmen  of  the  works  of  their  bet- 
ters, heaping  terms  of  moral  opprobrium 
upon  those  whose  genius  is,  if  not  exactly 
a  lamp  unto  our  feet,  at  all  events  a  joy  to 
our  hearts,  —  still,  not  even  genius  can  re- 
peal the  Decalogue,  or  re-write  the  sen- 
tence of  doom,  '  He  which  is  filthy,  let  him 
be  filthy  still.'  It  is  therefore  permissible 
to  wish  that  some  of  our  great  authors  had 
been  better  men. 

It  is  possible  to  dislike  John  Milton. 
Men  have  been  found  able  to  do  so,  and 
women  too  ;  amongst  these  latter  his 
daughters,  or  one  of  them  at  least,  must 
even  be  included.  But  there  is  nothing 
sickening  about  his  biography,  for  it  is  the 
life  of  one  who  early  consecrated  himself 
to  the  service  of  the  highest  Muses,  who 
took  labour  and  intent  study  as  his  por- 
tion, who  aspired  himself  to  be  a  noble 
poem,  who,  Republican  though  he  became, 
is  what  Carlyle  called  him,  the  moral  king 
of  English  literature. 

Milton  was  born  in  Bread  Street,  Cheap- 
side,  on  the  gth  of  December,  1608.  This 
is  most  satisfactory,  though  indeed  what 


JOHN  MILTON.  3 

might  have  been  expected.  There  is  a 
notable  disposition  nowadays,  amongst  the 
meaner -minded  provincials,  to  carp  and 
gird  at  the  claims  of  London  to  be  consid- 
ered the  mother  city  of  the  Anglo-Saxon 
race,  to  regret  her  pre-eminence,  and  sneer 
at  her  fame.  In  the  matters  of  municipal 
government,  gas,  water,  fog,  and  snow, 
much  can  be  alleged  and  proved  against 
the  English  capital,  but  in  the  domain  of 
poetry,  which  I  take  to  be  a  nation's  best 
guaranteed  stock,  it  may  safely  be  said 
that  there  are  but  two  shrines  in  England 
whither  it  is  necessary  for  the  literary  pil- 
grim to  carry  his  cockle  hat  and  shoon  — 
London,  the  birthplace  of  Chaucer,  Spen- 
ser-y  Ben  Jonson,  Milton,  Herrick,  Pope, 
Gray,  Blake,  Keats,  and  Browning,  and 
Stratford  -  upon  -  Avon,  the  birthplace  of 
Shakspeare.  Of  English  poets  it  may  be 
said  generally  they  are  either  born  in  Lon- 
don or  remote  country  places.  The  large 
provincial  towns  know  them  not.  Indeed, 
nothing  is  more  pathetic  than  the  way  in 
which  these  dim,  destitute  places  hug  the 
memory  of  any  puny  whipster  of  a  poet 
who  may  have  been  born  within  their  stat- 


4  JOHN  MILTON. 

utory  boundaries.  This  has  its  advantages, 
for  it  keeps  alive  in  certain  localities  fames 
that  would  otherwise  have  utterly  perished. 
Parnassus  has  forgotten  all  about  poor 
Henry  Kirke  White,  but  the  lace  manufac- 
turers of  Nottingham  still  name  him  with 
whatever  degree  of  reverence  they  may 
respectively  consider  to  be  the  due  of  let- 
ters. Manchester  is  yet  mindful  of  Dr. 
John  Byrom.  Liverpool  clings  to  Roscoe. 
Milton  remained  faithful  to  his  birth-city, 
though,  like  many  another  Londoner,  when 
he  was  persecuted  in  one  house  he  fled  into 
another.  From  Bread  Street  he  moved 
to  St.  Bride's  Churchyard,  Fleet  Street ; 
from  Fleet  Street  to  Aldersgate  Street ; 
from  Aldersgate  Street  to  the  Barbican  ; 
from  the  Barbican  to  the  south  side  of 
Holborn ;  from  the  south  side  of  Holborn 
to  what  is  now  called  York  Street,  West- 
minster; from  York  Street,  Westminster, 
to  the  north  side  of  Holborn  ;  from  the 
north  side  of  Holborn  to  Jewin  Street ; 
from  Jewin  Street  to  his  last  abode  in  Bun- 
hill  Fields.  These  are  not  vain  repetitions 
if  they  serve  to  remind  a  single  reader 
how  all  the  enchantments  of  association 


,  JOHN  MILTON.  5 

lie  about  him.  Englishwomen  have  been 
found  searching  about  Florence  for  the 
street  where  George  Eliot  represents  Ro- 
mola  as  having  lived,  who  have  admitted 
never  having  been  to  Jewin  Street,  where 
the  author  of  Lycidas  and  Paradise  Lost 
did  in  fact  live. 

Milton's  father  was  the  right  kind  of 
father,  amiable,  accomplished,  and  well-to- 
do.  He  was  by  business  what  was  then 
called  a  scrivener,  a  term  which*  has  re- 
ceived judicial  interpretation,  and  imported 
a  person  who  arranged  loans  on  mortgage, 
receiving  a  commission  for  so  doing.  The 
poet's  mother,  whose  baptismal  name  was 
Sarah  (his  father  was,  like  himself,  John), 
was  a  lady  of  good  extraction,  and  ap- 
proved excellence  and  virtue.  We  do  not 
know  very  much  about  her,  for  the  poet 
was  one  of  those  rare  men  of  genius  who 
are  prepared  to  do  justice  to  their  fathers. 
Though  Sarah  Milton  did  not  die  till  1637, 
she  only  knew  her  son  as  the  author  of 
Comus,  though  it  is  surely  a  duty  to  believe 
that  no  son  would  have  poems  like  L' Alle- 
gro and  //  Penseroso  in  his  desk,  and  not 
at  least  once  produce  them  and  read  them 


6  JOHN  MILTON. 

aloud  to  his  mother.  These  poems,  though 
not  published  till  1645,  were  certainly  com- 
posed in  his  mother's  life.  She  died  before 
the  troubles  began,  the  strife  and  conten- 
tion in  which  her  well-graced  son,  the  poet, 
the  dreamer  of  all  things  beautiful  and 
cultured,  the  author  of  the  glancing,  trip- 
ping measure  — 

'  Haste  thee,  nymph,  and  bring  with  thee 
Jest  and  youthful  jollity '  — 

was  destined  to  take  a  part,  so  eager  and 
so  fierce,  and  for  which  he  was  to  sacrifice 
twenty  years  of  a  poet's  life. 

The  poet  was  sent  to  St.  Paul's  School, 
where  he  had  excellent  teaching  of  a  hu- 
mane and  expanding  character,  and  he 
early  became,  what  he  remained  until  his 
sight  left  him,  a  strenuous  reader  and  a 
late  student. 

'  Or  let  my  lamp  at  midnight  hour 
Be  seen  on  some  high,  lonely  tower, 
Where  I  may  oft  outwatch  the  Bear.' 

Whether  the  maid  who  was  told  off  by  the 
elder  Milton  to  sit  up  till  twelve  or  one 
o'clock  in  the  morning  for  this  wonderful 
Pauline  realised  that  she  was  a  kind  of 


JOHN  MILTON.  7 

doorkeeper  in  the  house  of  genius,  and 
blessed  accordingly,  is  not  known,  and  may 
be  doubted.  When  sixteen  years  old  Mil- 
ton proceeded  to  Christ's  College,  Cam- 
bridge, where  his  memory  is  still  cherished ; 
and  a  mulberry  tree,  supposed  in  some  way 
to  be  his,  rather  unkindly  kept  alive.  Mil- 
ton was  not  a  submissive  pupil  ;  in  fact,  he 
was  never  a  submissive  anything,  for  there 
is  point  in  Dr.  Johnson's  malicious  remark, 
that  man  in  Milton's  opinion  was  born  to 
be  a  rebel,  and  woman  a  slave. 

But  in  most  cases,  at  all  events,  the  rebel 
did  well  to  be  rebellious,  and  perhaps  he 
was  never  so  entirely  in  the  right  as  when 
he  protested  against  the  slavish  traditions, 
of  Cambridge  educational  methods  in  1625. 

Universities  must,  however,  at  all  times 
prove  disappointing  places  to  the  young 
and  ingenuous  soul,  who  goes  up  to  them 
eager  for  literature,  seeing  in  every  don  a 
devotee  to  intellectual  beauty,  and  hoping 
that  lectures  will,  by  some  occult  process 
—  the  genius  loci  —  initiate  him  into  the 
mysteries  of  taste  and  the  storehouses  of 
culture.  And  then  the  improving  conver- 
sation, the  flashing  wit,  the  friction  of  mind 


8  JOHN  MILTON. 

with  mind,  —  these  are  looked  for,  but 
hardly  found ;  and  the  young  scholar  groans 
in  spirit,  and  perhaps 'does  as  Milton  did  — 
quarrels  with  his  tutor.  But  if  he  is  wise 
he  will,  as  Milton  also  did,  make  it  up 
again,  and  get  the  most  that  he  can  from 
his  stony-hearted  stepmother  before  the 
time  comes  for  him  to  bid  her  his  Vale  vale 
et  aternum  vale. 

Milton  remained  seven  years  at  Cam- 
bridge—  from  1625  to  1632  —  from  his  six- 
teenth to  his  twenty-fourth  year.  Any  in- 
tention or  thought  he  ever  may  have  had 
of  taking  orders  he  seems  early  to  have 
rejected  with  a  characteristic  scorn.  He 
considered  a  state  of  subscription  to  arti- 
cles a  state  of  slavery,  and  Milton  was  al- 
ways determined,  whatever  else  he  was  or 
might  become,  to  be  his  own  man.  Though 
never  in  sympathy  with  the  governing  tone 
of  the  place,  there  is  no  reason  to  suppose 
that  Milton  (any  more  than  others)  found 
this  lack  seriously  to  interfere  with  a  fair 
amount  of  good  solid  enjoyment  from  day 
to  day.  He  had  friends  who  courted  his 
society,  and  pursuits  both  grave  and  gay 
to  occupy  his  hours  of  study  and  relaxation. 


JOHN  MILTON.  9 

He  was  called  the  '  Lady '  of  his  college, 
on  account  of  his  personal  beauty  and  the 
purity  and  daintiness  of  his  life  and  con- 
versation. 

After  leaving  Cambridge  Milton  began 
his  life,  so  attractive  to  one's  thoughts,  at 
Morton,  in  Buckinghamshire,  where  his 
father  had  a  house  in  which  his  mother 
was  living.  Here,  for  five  years,  from  his 
twenty-fourth  to  his  twenty-ninth  year  — 
a  period  often  stormy  in  the  lives  of  poets 
—  he  continued  his  work  of  self-education. 
Some  of  his  Cambridge  friends  appear  to 
have  grown  a  little  anxious,  on  seeing  one 
who  had  distinction  stamped  upon  his  brow, 
doing  what  the  world  calls  nothing ;  and 
Milton  himself  was  watchful,  and  even  sus- 
picious. His  second  sonnet  records  this 
state  of  feeling: 

'  How  soon  hath  Time,  the  subtle  thief  of  youth, 
Stolen  on  his  wing  my  three-and-twentieth  year  ! 
My  hasting  days  fly  on  with  full  career, 
But  my  late  spring  no  bud  or  blossom  shew'th.' 

And  yet  no  poet  had  ever  a  more  beautiful 
springtide,  though  it  was  restless,  as  spring 
should  be,  with  the  promise  of  greater 
things  and  'high  midsummer  pomps.'  These 


IO  JOHN  MILTON. 

latter  it  was  that  were  postponed  almost  too 
long. 

Milton  at  Horton  made  up  his  mind  to 
be  a  great  poet  —  neither  more  nor  less  ; 
and  with  that  end  in  view  he  toiled  unceas- 
ingly. A  more  solemn  dedication  of  a  man 
by  himself  to  the  poetical  office  cannot  be 
imagined.  Everything  about  him  became 
as  it  were  pontifical,  almost  sacramental. 
A  poet's  soul  must  contain  the  perfect 
shape  of  all  things  good,  wise,  and  just. 
His  body  must  be  spotless  and  without 
blemish,  his  life  pure,  his  thoughts  high, 
his  studies  intense.  There  was  no  drink- 
ing at  the  'Mermaid'  for  John  Milton. 
His  thoughts,  like  his  pys,  were  not  those 
that 

1  are  in  widest  commonalty  spread.' 

When  in  his  walks  he  met  the  Hodge  of  his 
period,  he  is  more  likely  to  have  thought 
of  a  line  in  Virgil  than  of  stopping  to  have 
a  chat  with  the  poor  fellow.  He  became  a 
student  of  the  Italian  language,  and  writes 
to  a  friend  :  '  I  who  certainly  have  not 
merely  wetted  the  tip  of  my  lips  in  the 
stream  of  these  (the  classical)  languages, 
but  in  proportion  to  my  years  have  swal- 


JOHN  MILTON.  II 

lowed  the  most  copious  draughts,  can  yet 
sometimes  retire  with  avidity  and  delight 
to  feast  on  Dante,  Petrarch,  and  many 
others  ;  nor  has  Athens  itself  been  able  to 
confine  me  to  the  transparent  waves  of  its 
Ilissus,  nor  ancient  Rome  to  the  banks  of 
its  Tiber,  so  as  to  prevent  my  visiting  with 
delight  the  streams  of  the  Arno  and  the 
hills  of  Faesolae.' 

Now  it  was  that  he,  in  his  often-quoted 
words  written  to  the  young  Deodati, 
doomed  to  an  early  death,  was  meditating 
'  an  immortality  of  fame,'  letting  his  wings 
grow  and  preparing  to  fly.  But  dreaming 
though  he  ever  was  of  things  to  come, 
none  the  less,  it  was  at  Horton  he  com- 
posed Comus,  Lycidas,  L' Allegro,  and  // 
Penseroso,  poems  which  enable  us  half 
sadly  to  realise  how  much  went  and  how 
much  was  sacrificed  to  make  the  author  of 
Paradise  Lost. 

After  five  years'  retirement  Milton  be- 
gan to  feel  the  want  of  a  little  society,  of 
the  kind  that  is  '  quiet,  wise,  and  good,' 
and  he  meditated  taking  chambers  in  one 
of  the  Inns  of  Court,  where  he  could  have 
a  pleasant  and  shady  walk  under  '  imme- 


12  JOHN  MILTON. 

morial  elms,'  and  also  enjoy  the  advantages 
of  a  few  choice  associates  at  home  and  an 
elegant  society  abroad.  The  death  of  his 
mother  in  1637  gave  his  thoughts  another 
direction,  and  he  obtained  his  father's  per- 
mission to  travel  in  Italy,  '  that  woman- 
country,  wooed  not  wed,'  which  has  been 
the  mistress  of  so  many  poetical  hearts, 
and  was  so  of  John  Milton's.  His  friends 
and  relatives  saw  but  one  difficulty  in  the 
way.  John  Milton  the  younger,  though 
not  at  this  time  a  Nonconformist,  was  a 
stern  and  unbending  Protestant,  and  was 
as  bitter  an  opponent  of  His  Holiness  the 
Pope  as  he  certainly  would  have  been,  had 
his  days  been  prolonged,  of  His  Majesty 
the  Pretender. 

There  is  something  very  characteristic 
in  this  almost  inflamed  hostility  in  the  case 
of  a  man  with  such  a  love  of  beauty  and 
passion  for  architecture  and  music  as  al- 
ways abided  in  Milton,  and  who  could 
write  — 

'  But  let  my  due  feet  never  fail 
To  walk  the  studious  cloisters  pale, 
And  love  the  high  embowed  roof, 
With  antique  pillars  massy-proof, 


JOHN  MILTON.  13 

And  storied  windows  richly  dight, 

Casting  a  dim,  religious  light. 

There  let  the  pealing  organ  flow 

To  the  full-voiced  quire  below, 

In  service  high  and  anthems  clear, 

As  may  with  sweetness,  through  mine  ear, 

Dissolve  me  into  ecstacies, 

And  bring  all  heaven  before  my  eyes.' 

Here  surely  is  proof  of  an  aesthetic  nature 
beyond  most  of  our  modern  raptures  ;  but 
none  the  less,  and  at  the  very  same  time, 
Rome  was  for  Milton  the  '  grim  wolf '  who 
'  with  privy  paw,  daily  devours  apace.'  It 
is  with  a  sigh  of  sad  sincerity  that  Dr. 
Newman  admits  that  Milton  breathes 
through  his  pages  a  hatred  of  the  Catholic 
Church,  and  consequently  the  Cardinal 
feels  free  to  call  him  a  proud  and  rebellious 
creature  of  God.  That  Milton  was  both 
proud  and  rebellious  cannot  be  disputed. 
Nonconformists  need  not  claim  him  for 
their  own  with  much  eagerness.  What  he 
thought  of  Presbyterians  we  know,  and  he 
was  never  a  church  member,  or  indeed  a 
church-goer.  Dr.  Newman  has  admitted 
that  the  poet  Pope  was  an  unsatisfactory 
Catholic  ;  Milton  was  certainly  an  unsatis- 
factory Dissenter.  Let  us  be  candid  in 


14  JOHN  MILTON. 

these  matters.  Milton  was  therefore  bid- 
den by  his  friends,  and  by  those  with 
whom  he  took  council,  to  hold  his  peace 
whilst  in  Rome  about  the  '  privy  wolf/  and 
he  promised  to  do  so,  adding,  however,  the 
Miltonic  proviso  that  this  was  on  condition 
that  the  Papists  did  not  attack  his  religion 
first.  '  If  anyone,'  he  wrote,  '  in  the  very 
city  of  the  Pope,  attacked  the  orthodox  re- 
ligion, I  defended  it  most  freely.'  To  call 
the  Protestant  religion,  which  had  not  yet 
attained  to  its  second  century,  the  orthodox 
religion  under  the  shadow  of  the  Vatican 
was  to  have  the  courage  of  his  opinions. 
But  Milton  was  not  a  man  to  be  frightened 
of  schism.  That  his  religious  opinions 
should  be  peculiar  probably  seemed  to  him 
to  be  almost  inevitable,  and  not  unbecom- 
ing. He  would  have  agreed  with  Emer- 
son, who  declares  that  would  man  be  great 
he  must  be  a  Nonconformist. 

There  is  something  very  fascinating  in 
the  records  we  have  of  Milton's  one  visit 
to  the  Continent.  A  more  impressive 
Englishman  never  left  our  shores.  Sir 
Philip  Sidney  perhaps  approaches  him  near- 
est. Beautiful  beyond  praise,  and  just  suf- 


JOHN  MILTON.  15 

ficiently  conscious  of  it  to  be  careful  never 
to  appear  at  a  disadvantage,  dignified  in 
manners,  versed  in  foreign  tongues,  yet 
full  of  the  ancient  learning,  —  a  gentleman, 
a  scholar,  a  poet,  a  musician,  and  a  Chris- 
tian, —  he  moved  about  in  a  leisurely  man- 
ner from  city  to  city,  writing  Latin  verses 
for  his  hosts  and  Italian  sonnets  in  their 
ladies'  albums,  buying  books  and  music, 
and  creating,  one  cannot  doubt,  an  all  too 
flattering  impression  of  an  English  Protes- 
tant. To  travel  in  Italy  with  Montaigne 
or  Milton,  or  Evelyn  or  Gray,  or  Shelley, 
or,  pathetic  as  it  is,  with  the  dying  Sir 
Walter,  is  perhaps  more  instructive  than 
to  go  there  for  yourself  with  a  tourist's 
ticket.  Old  Montaigne,  who  was  but  forty- 
seven  when  he  made  his  journey,  and 
whom  therefore  I  would  not  call  old  had 
not  Pope  done  so  before  me,  is  the  most 
delightful  of  travelling  companions,  and  as 
easy  as  an  old  shoe.  A  humaner  man 
than  Milton,  a  wiser  man  than  Evelyn  — 
with  none  of  the  constraint  of  Gray,  or  the 
strange  though  fascinating  outlandishness 
of  Shelley  —  he  perhaps  was  more  akin  to 
Scott  than  any  of  the  other  travellers  ;  but 


1 6  JOHN  MILTON. 

Scott  went  to  Italy  an  overwhelmed  man, 
whose  only  fear  was  he  might  die  away 
from  the  heather  and  the  murmur  of 
Tweed.  However,  Milton  is  the  most  im- 
proving companion  of  them  all,  and  amidst 
the  impurities  of  Italy,  '  in  all  the  places 
where  vice  meets  with  so  little  discour- 
agement, and  is  protected  with  so  little 
shame,'  he  remained  the  Milton  of  Cam- 
bridge and  Horton,  and  did  nothing  to 
pollute  the  pure  temple  of  a  poet's  mind. 
He  visited  Paris,  Nice,  Genoa,  Pisa,  and 
Florence,  staying  in  the  last  city  two 
months,  and  living  on  terms  of  great  in- 
timacy with  seven  young  Italians,  whose 
musical  names  he  duly  records.  These 
were  the  months  of  August  and  Septem- 
ber, not  nowadays  reckoned  safe  months 
for  Englishmen  to  be  in  Florence  —  mod- 
ern lives  being  raised  in  price.  From  Flor- 
ence he  proceeded  through  Siena  to  Rome, 
where  he  also  stayed  two  months.  There 
he  was  present  at  a  magnificent  entertain- 
ment given  by  the  Cardinal  Francesco 
Barberini  in  his  palace,  and  heard  the 
singing  of  the  celebrated  Leonora  Baroni. 
It  is  not  for  one  moment  to  be  supposed 


JOHN  MILTON.  17 

that  he  sought  an  interview  with  the  Pope, 
as  Montaigne  had  done,  who  was  exhorted 
by  his  holiness  '  to  persevere  in  the  devo- 
tion he  had  ever  manifested  in  the  cause 
of  the  Church ; '  and  yet  perhaps  Mon- 
taigne by  his  Essays  did  more  to  sap  the 
authority  of  Peter's  Chair  than  Milton, 
however  willing,  was  able  to  do. 

It  has  been  remarked  that  Milton's  chief 
enthusiasm  in  Italy  was  not  art,  but  music, 
which  falls  in  with  Coleridge's  dictum^  that 
Milton  is  not  so  much  a  picturesque  as  a 
musical  poet,  —  meaning  thereby,  I  sup- 
pose, that  the  effects  which  he  produces  and 
the  scenes  which  he  portrays  are  rather  sug- 
gested to  us  by  the  rhythm  of  his  lines  than 
by  actual  verbal  descriptions.  From  Rome 
Milton  went  to  Naples,  from  whence  he 
had  intended  to  go  to  Sicily  and  Greece, 
but  the  troubles  beginning  at  home  he  fore- 
went this  pleasure,  and  consequently  never 
saw  Athens,  which  was  surely  a  great  pity. 
He  returned  to  Rome,  where,  troubles  or 
no  troubles,  he  stayed  another  two  months. 
From  Rome  he  went  back  to  Florence, 
which  he  found  too  pleasant  to  leave  under 
two  more  months.  Then  he  went  to  Lucca, 


1 8  JOHN  MILTON. 

and  so  to  Venice,  where  he  was  very  stern 
with  himself,  and  only  lingered  a  month. 
From  Venice  he  went  to  Milan,  and  then 
over  the  Alps  to  Geneva,  where  he  had 
dear  friends.  He  was  back  in  London  in 
August  1639,  after  an  absence  of  fifteen 
months. 

The  times  were  troubled  enough.  Poor 
Charles  I.,  whose  literary  taste  was  so  good 
that  one  must  regret  the  mischance  that 
placed  a  crown  upon  his  comely  head,  was 
trying  hard,  at  the  bidding  of  a  priest,  to 
thrust  Episcopacy  down  Scottish  throats, 
who  would  not  have  it  at  any  price.  He 
was  desperately  in  need  of  money,  and  the 
House  of  Commons  (which  had  then  a 
raison  d'etre}  was  not  prepared  to  give  him 
any  except  on  terms.  Altogether  it  was 
an  exciting  time,  but  Milton  was  in  no  way 
specially  concerned  in  it  Milton  looms 
so  large  in  our  imagination  amongst  the 
figures  of  the  period  that,  despite  Dr.  John- 
son's sneers,  we  are  apt  to  forget  his  polit- 
ical insignificance,  and  to  fancy  him  cur- 
tailing his  tour  and  returning  home  to  take 
his  place  amongst  the  leaders  of  the  Par- 
liament men.  Return  home  he  did,  but  it 


JOHN  MILTON.  1 9 

was,  as  another  pedagogue  has  reminded 
us,  to  receive  boys  'to  be  boarded  and  in- 
structed.' Dr.  Johnson  tells  us  that  we 
ought  not  to  allow  our  veneration  for  Mil- 
ton to  rob  us  of  a  joke  at  the  expense  of  a 
man  '  who  hastens  home  because  his  coun- 
trymen are  contending  for  their  liberty, 
and  when  he  reaches  the  scene  of  action 
vapours  away  his  patriotism  in  a  private 
boarding-school ;'  but  that  this  observation 
was  dictated  by  the  good  Doctor's  spleen 
is  made  plain  by  his  immediately  proceed- 
ing to  point  out,  with  his  accustomed  good 
sense,  that  there  is  really  nothing  to  laugh 
at,  since  it  was  desirable  that  Milton,  whose 
father  was  alive  and  could  only  make  him 
a  small  allowance,  should  do  something, 
and  there  was  no  shame  in  his  adopting  an 
honest  and  useful  employment. 

To  be  a  Parliament  man  was  no  part  of 
the  ambition  of  one  who  still  aspired  to 
be  a  poet  ;  who  was  not  yet  blind  to  the 
heavenly  vision  ;  who  was  still  meditating 
what  should  be  his  theme,  and  who  in  the 
meantime  chastised  his  sister's  sons,  un- 
ruly lads,  who  did  him  no -credit  and  bore 
him  no  great  love. 


2O  JOHN  MILTON. 

The  Long  Parliament  met  in  November 
1640,  and  began  its  work,  —  brought  Straf- 
ford  to  the  scaffold,  clapped  Laud  into  the 
Tower,  Archbishop  though  he  was,  and 
secured  as  best  they  could  the  permanency 
of  parliamentary  institutions.  None  of 
these  things  specially  concerned  John  Mil- 
ton. But  there  also  uprose  the  eternal 
Church  question,  '  What  sort  of  Church 
are  we  to  have  ? '  The  fierce  controversy 
raged,  and  '  its  fair  enticing  fruit,'  spread 
round  '  with  liberal  hand,'  proved  too  much 
for  the  father  of  English  epic. 

'  He  scrupled  not  to  eat 
Against  his  better  knowledge.' 

In  other  words,  he  commenced  pamphlet- 
eering, and  between  May  1641  and  the  fol- 
lowing March  he  had  written  five  pamphlets 
against  Episcopacy,  and  used  an  intolerable 
deal  of  bad  language,  which,  however  ex- 
cusable in  a  heated  controversialist,  ill 
became  the  author  of  Comus. 

The  war  broke  out  in  1642,  but  Milton 
kept  house.  The  '  tented  field '  had  no 
attractions  for  him. 

In  the  summer  of  1643  he  took  a  sudden 
journey  into  the  country,  and  returned 


JOHN  MILTON.  21 

home  to  his  boys  with  a  wife,  the  daughter 
of  an  Oxfordshire  Cavalier.  Poor  Mary 
Powell  was  but  seventeen,  her  poetic  lord 
was  thirty-five.  From  the  country-house 
of  a  rollicking  squire  to  Aldersgate  Street 
was  somewhat  too  violent  a  change.  She 
had  left  ten  brothers  and  sisters  behind 
her,  the  eldest  twenty-one,  the  youngest 
four.  As  one  looks  upon  this  picture  and 
on  that,  there  is  no  need  to  wonder  that 
the  poor  girl  was  unhappy.  The  poet, 
though  keenly  alive  to  the  subtle  charm 
of  a  woman's  personality,  was  unpractised 
in  the  arts  of  daily  companionship.  He 
expected  to  find  much  more  than  he 
brought  of  general  good-fellowship.  He 
had  an  ideal  ever  in  his  mind  of  both 
bodily  and  spiritual  excellence,  and  he  was 
almost  greedy  to  realise  both,  but  he  knew 
not  how.  One  of  his  complaints  was  that 
his  wife  was  mute  and  insensate,  and  sat 
silent  at  his  board.  It  must,  no  doubt, 
have  been  deadly  dull,  that  house  in  Al- 
dersgate Street.  Silence  feigned,  save 
when  broken  by  the  cries  of  the  younger 
Phillips  sustaining  chastisement.  Milton 
had  none  of  that  noble  humanitarian  spirit 


22  JOHN  MILTON. 

which  had  led  Montaigne  long  years  before 
him  to  protest  against  the  cowardly  tradi- 
tions of  the  schoolroom.  After  a  month 
of  Aldersgate  Street,  Mrs.  Milton  begged 
to  go  home.  Her  wish  was  granted,  and 
she  ran  back  to  her  ten  brothers  and  sis- 
ters, and  when  her  leave  of  absence  was  up 
refused  to  return.  Her  husband  was  furi- 
ously angry ;  and  in  a  time  so  short  as  al- 
most to  enforce  the  belief  that  he  began 
the  work  during  the  honeymoon,  was  ready 
with  his  celebrated  pamphlet,  The  Doctrine 
and  Discipline  of  Divorce  restored  to  the 
good  of  both  sexes.  He  is  even  said,  with 
his  accustomed  courage,  to  have  paid  atten- 
tions to  a  Miss  Davis,  who  is  described  as 
a  very  handsome  and  witty  gentlewoman, 
and  therefore  not  one  likely  to  sit  silent  at 
his  board ;  but  she  was  a  sensible  girl  as 
well,  and  had  no  notion  of  a  married  suitor. 
Of  Milton's  pamphlet  it  is  everyone's  duty 
to  speak  with  profound  respect.  It  is  a 
noble  and  passionate  cry  for  a  high  ideal 
of  married  life,  which,  so  he  argued,  had  by 
inflexible  laws  been  changed  into  a  droop- 
ing and  disconsolate  household  captivity, 
without  refuge  or  redemption.  He  shud- 


JOHN  MILTON.  2$ 

dered  at  the  thought  of  a  man  and  woman 
being  condemned,  for  a  mistake  of  judg- 
ment, to  be  bound  together  to  their  unspeak- 
able wearisomeness  and  despair,  for,  he 
says,  not  to  be  beloved  and  yet  retained  is 
the  greatest  injury  to  a  gentle  spirit.  Our 
present  doctrine  of  divorce,  which  sets  the 
household  captive  free  on  payment  of  a 
broken  vow,  but  on  no  less  ignoble  terms, 
is  not  founded  on  the  congruous,  and  is 
indeed  already  discredited  if  not  disgraced. 
This  pamphlet  on  divorce  marks  the  be- 
ginning of  Milton's  mental  isolation.  No- 
body had  a  word  to  say  for  it.  Episco- 
palian, Presbyterian,  and  Independent  held 
his  doctrine  in  as  much  abhorrence  as  did 
the  Catholic,  and  all  alike  regarded  its  au- 
thor as  either  an  impracticable  dreamer 
or  worse.  It  was  written  certainly  in  too 
great  haste,  for  his  errant  wife,  actuated 
by  what  motives  cannot  now  be  said,  re- 
turned to  her  allegiance,  was  mindful  of 
her  plighted  troth,  and,  suddenly  entering 
his  room,  fell  at  his  feet  and  begged  to  be 
forgiven.  She  was  only  nineteen,  and  she 
said  it  was  all  her  mother's  fault.  Milton 
was  not  a  sour  man,  and  though  perhaps 


24  JOHN  MILTON. 

too  apt  to  insist  upon  repentance  preced- 
ing forgiveness,  yet  when  it  did  so  he  could 
forgive  divinely.  In  a  very  short  time  the 
whole  family  of  Powells,  whom  the  war 
had  reduced  to  low  estate,  were  living  un- 
der his  roof  in  the  Barbican,  whither  he 
moved  on  the  Aldersgate  House  proving 
too  small  for  his  varied  belongings.  The 
poet's  father  also  lived  with  his  son.  Mrs. 
Milton  had  four  children,  three  of  whom, 
all  daughters,  lived  to  grow  up.  The 
mother  died  in  childbirth  in  1652,  being 
then  twenty-six  years  of  age. 

The  Areopagitica,  a  Speech  for  Unli- 
censed Printing,  followed  the  divorce  pam- 
phlet, but  it  also  fell  upon  deaf  ears.  Of 
all  religious  sects  the  Presbyterians,  who 
were  then  dominant,  are  perhaps  the  least 
likely  to  forego  the  privilege  of  interfer- 
ence in  the  affairs  of  others.  Instead  of 
the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  and  the 
Bishop  of  London,  instead  of  *a  lordly 
Imprimatur,  one  from  Lambeth  House, 
another  from  the  west  end  of  Paul's,' 
there  was  appointed  a  commission  of 
twenty  Presbyterians  to  act  as  State  Li- 
censers. Then  was  Milton's  soul  stirred 


JOHN  MILTON.  25 

within  him  to  a  noble  rage.  His  was  a 
threefold  protest,  —  as  a  citizen  of  a  State 
he  fondly  hoped  had  been  free,  as  an  au- 
thor, and  as  a  reader.  As  a  citizen  he 
protested  against  so  unnecessary  and  im- 
proper an  interference.  It  is  not,  he  cried, 
'  the  unfrocking  of  a  priest,  the  unmitring 
of  a  bishop,  that  will  make  us  a  happy  na- 
tion,' but  the  practice  of  virtue,  and  virtue 
means  freedom  to  choose.  Milton  was  a 
manly  politician,  and  detested  with  his 
whole  soul  grandmotherly  legislation.  '  He 
who  is  not  trusted  with  his  own  actions, 
his  drift  not  being  known  to  be  evil,  and 
standing  to  the  hazard  of  law  and  penalty, 
has  no  great  argument  to  think  himself  re- 
puted in  the  commonwealth  wherein  he 
was  born,  for  other  than  a  fool  or  a  for- 
eigner.' '  They  are  not  skilful  considerers 
of  human  things  who  imagine  to  remove 
sin  by  removing  the  matter  of  sin.'  'And 
were  I  the  chooser,  a  dram  of  well-doing 
should  be  preferred  before  many  times  as 
much  the  forcible  hindrance  of  evil  doing.' 
These  are  texts  upon  which  sermons,  not 
inapplicable  to  our  own  day,  might  be 
preached.  Milton  has  made  our  first  par- 


26  JOHN  MILTON. 

ent  so  peculiarly  his  own  that  any  observa- 
tions of  his  about  Adam  are  interesting. 
4  Many  there  be  that  complain  of  Divine 
Providence  for  suffering  Adam  to  trans- 
gress. Foolish  tongues  !  When  God  gave 
him  reason  He  gave  him  freedom  to  choose, 
for  reason  is  but  choosing ;  he  had  been 
else  a  mere  artificial  Adam.  We  ourselves 
esteem  not  of  that  obedience  a  love  or  gift 
which  is  of  force.  God  therefore  left  him 
free,  set  before  him  a  provoking  object 
ever  almost  in  his  eyes  ;  herein  consisted 
his  merit,  herein  the  right  of  his  reward, 
the  praise  of  his  abstinence.'  So  that  ac- 
cording to  Milton  even  Eden  was  a  state 
of  trial.  As  an  author,  Milton's  protest 
has  great  force.  'And  what  if  the  author 
shall  be  one  so  copious  of  fancy  as  to  have 
many  things  well  worth  the  adding  come 
into  his  mind  after  licensing,  while  the 
book  is  yet  under  the  press,  which  not 
seldom  happens  to  the  best  and  diligentest 
writers,  and  that  perhaps  a  dozen  times  in 
one  book.  The  printer  dares  not  go  be- 
yond his  licensed  copy.  So  often  then 
must  the  author  trudge  to  his  leave-giver 
that  those  his  new  insertions  may  be 


JOHN  MILTON.  2? 

viewed,  and  many  a  jaunt  will  be  made 
ere  that  licenser — for  it  must  be  the  same 
man  —  can  either  be  found,  or  found  at 
leisure  ;  meanwhile  either  the  press  must 
stand  still,  which  is  no  small  damage,  or 
the  author  lose  his  accuratest  thoughts, 
and  send  forth  the  book  worse  than  he 
made  it,  which  to  a  diligent  writer  is  the 
greatest  melancholy  and  vexation  that  can 
befall.' 

Milton  would  have  had  no  licensers. 
Every  book  should  bear  the  printer's 
name,  and  '  mischievous  and  libellous 
books '  were  to  be  burnt  by  the  common 
hangman,  not  as  an  effectual  remedy,  but 
as  the  *  most  effectual  remedy  man's  pre- 
vention can  use.' 

The  noblest  pamphlet  in  '  our  English, 
the  language  of  men  ever  famous  and  fore- 
most in  the  achievements  of  liberty,'  ac- 
complished nothing,  and  its  author  must 
already  have  thought  himself  fallen  on  evil 
days. 

In  the  year  1645,  the  year  of  Naseby,  as 
Mr.  Pattison  reminds  us,  appeared  the  first 
edition  of  Milton's  Poems.  Then,  for  the 
first  time,  were  printed  V Allegro  and  // 


28  JOHN  MILTON. 

Penseroso,  the  Ode  on  the  Morning  of 
Christ's  Nativity,  and  various  of  the  son- 
nets. The  little  volume  also  contained 
Comus  and  Lycidas,  which  had  been  pre- 
viously printed.  With  the  exception  of 
three  sonnets  and  a  few  scraps  of  transla- 
tion, Milton  had  written  nothing  but  pam- 
phlets since  his  return  from  Italy.  At  the 
beginning  of  the  volume,  which  is  a  small 
octavo,  was  a  portrait  of  the  poet,  most 
villainously  executed.  He  was  really  thir- 
ty-seven, but  flattered  himself,  as  men  of 
that  age  will,  that  he  looked  ten  years 
younger  ;  he  was  therefore  much  chagrined 
to  find  himself  represented  as  a  grim-look- 
ing gentleman  of  at  least  fifty.  The  way 
he  revenged  himself  upon  the  hapless  artist 
is  well  known.  The  volume,  with  the  por- 
trait, is  now  very  scarce,  almost  rare. 

In  1647  Milton  removed  from  the  Bar- 
bican, both  his  father  and  his  father-in-law 
being  dead,  to  a  smaller  house  in  Holborn, 
backing  upon  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields,  close 
to  where  the  Inns  of  Court  Hotel  now 
stands,  and  not  far  from  the  spot  which 
was  destined  to  witness  the  terrible  tragedy 
which  was  at  once  to  darken  and  glorify 


JOHN  MILTON.  29 

the  life  of  one  of  Milton's  most  fervent 
lovers,  Charles  Lamb.  About  this  time 
he  is  supposed  to  have  abandoned  peda- 
gogy. The  habit  of  pamphleteering  stuck 
to  him  ;  indeed,  it  is  one  seldom  thrown 
off.  It  is  much  easier  to  throw  off  the 
pamphlets. 

In  1649  Milton  became  a  public  servant, 
receiving  the  appointment  of  Latin  Secre- 
tary to  the  Council  of  Foreign  Affairs.  He 
knew  some  member  of  the  Committee, 
who  obtained  his  nomination.  His  duties 
were  purely  clerkly.  It  was  his  business 
to  translate  English  despatches  into  Latin, 
and  foreign  despatches  into  English.  He 
had  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  the  shap- 
ing of  the  foreign  policy  of  the  Common- 
wealth. He  was  not  even  employed  in 
translating  the  most  important  of  the  State 
papers.  There  is  no  reason  for  supposing 
that  he  even  knew  the  leading  politicians 
of  his  time.  There  is  a  print  one  sees 
about,  representing  Oliver  Cromwell  dic- 
tating a  foreign  despatch  to  John  Milton  ; 
but  it  is  all  imagination,  nor  is  there  any- 
thing to  prove  that  Cromwell  and  Milton, 
the  body  and  soul  of  English  Republican- 


3<D  JOHN  MILTON. 

ism,  were  ever  in  the  same  room  together, 
or  exchanged  words  with  one  another. 
Milton's  name  does  not  occur  in  the  great 
history  of  Lord  Clarendon.  Whitelocke, 
who  was  the  leading  member  of  the  Com- 
mittee which  Milton  served,  only  mentions 
him  once.  Thurloe  spoke  of  him  as  a  blind 
man  who  wrote  Latin  letters.  Richard 
Baxter,  in  his  folio  history  of  his  Life  and 
Times,  never  mentions  Milton  at  all.*  He 
was  just  a  clerk  in  the  service  of  the  Com- 
monwealth, of  a  scholarly  bent,  peculiar 
habit  of  thought,  and  somewhat  of  an  odd 
temper.  He  was  not  the  man  to  cultivate 
great  acquaintances,  or  to  fritter  away  his 
time  waiting  the  convenience  of  other  peo- 
ple. When  once  asked  to  use  his  influence 
to  obtain  for  a  friend  an  appointment,  he 
replied  he  had  no  influence,  'propter  pau- 
cissimas  familiaritates  meas  cum  gratio- 
sis,  qui  domi  fere,  idque  libenter,  me  conti- 
neo'  The  busy  great  men  of  the  day 
would  have  been  more  than  astonished, 
they  would  have  been  disgusted,  had  they 
been  told  that  posterity  would  refer  to  most 
of  them  compendiously,  as  having  lived 

*  See  note  to  Mitford's  Milton,  Vol.  I.,  clii. 


JOHN  MIL  TON.  3 1 

in  the  age  of  Milton.     But  this  need  not 
trouble  us. 

On  the  Continent  Milton  enjoyed  a  wider 
reputation,  on  account  of  his  controversy 
with  the  great  European  scholar,  Salmasius, 
on  the  sufficiently  important  and  interest- 
ing, and  then  novel,  subject  of  the  execu- 
tion of  Charles  I.  Was  it  justifiable  ?  Sal- 
masius,  a  scholar  and  a  Protestant,  though 
of  an  easy-going  description,  was  employed, 
or  rather,  as  he  had  no  wages  (Milton's 
hundred  Jacobuses  being  fictitious),  nomi- 
nated by  Charles,  afterwards  the  Second,  to 
indict  the  regicides  at  the  bar  of  European  . 
opinion,  which  accordingly  he  did  in  the 
Latin  language.  The  work  reached  this 
country  in  the  autumn  of  1649,  and  ft  Qv'l~ 
dently  became  the  duty  of  somebody  to  an- 
swer it.  Two  qualifications  were  necessary 
—  the  replier  must  be  able  to  read  Latin, 
and  to  write  it  after  a  manner  which  should 
escape  the  ridicule  of  the  scholars  of  Ley- 
den,  Geneva,  and  Paris.  Milton  occurred 
to  somebody's  mind,  and  the  task  was  en- 
trusted to  him.  It  is  not  to  be  supposed 
that  Cromwell  was  ever  at  the  pains  to  read 
Salmasius  for  himself,  but  still  it  would  not 


32  JOHN  MILTON, 

have  done  to  have  it  said  that  the  Defemio 
Regia  of  so  celebrated  a  scholar  as  Salma- 
sius  remained  unanswered,  and  so  the  ap- 
pointment was  confirmed,  and  Milton,  no 
new  hand  at  a  pamphlet,  set  to  work.  In 
March  1651  his  first  Defence  of  the  English 
People  was  in  print.  In  this  great  pam- 
phlet Milton  asserts,  as  against  the  doctrine 
of  the  divine  right  of  kings,  the  undis- 
puted sovereignty  of  the  people  ;  and  he 
maintains  the  proposition  that,  as  well  by 
the  law  of  God,  as  by  the  law  of  nations, 
and  the  law  of  England,  a  king  of  England 
may  be  brought  to  trial  and  death,  the 
people  being  discharged  from  all  obligations 
of  loyalty  when  a  lawful  prince  becomes  a 
tyrant,  or  gives  himself  over  to  sloth  and 
voluptuousness.  This  noble  argument,  alike 
worthy  of  the  man  and  the  occasion,  is 
doubtless  overclouded  and  disfigured  by 
personal  abuse  of  Salmasius,  whose  rela- 
tions with  his  wife  had  surely  as  little  to  do 
with  the  head  of  Charles  I.  as  had  poor 
Mr.  Dick's  memorial.  Salmasius,  it  appears, 
was  henpecked,  and  to  allow  yourself  to  be 
henpecked  was,  in  Milton's  opinion,  a  high 
crime  and  misdemeanour  against  humanity, 


JOHN  MILTON.  33 

and  one  which  rendered  a  man  infamous, 
and  disqualified  him  from  taking  part  in 
debate. 

It  has  always  been  reported  that  Salma- 
sius,  who  was  getting  on  in  years,  and  had 
many  things  to  trouble  him  besides  his  own 
wife,  perished  in  tfie  effort  of  writing  a  re- 
ply to  Milton,  in  which  he  made  use  of  lan- 
guage quite  as  bad  as  any  of  his  opponent's ; 
but  it  now  appears  that  this  is  not  so.  In- 
deed, it  is  generally  rash  to  attribute  a 
man's  death  to  a  pamphlet,  or  an  article, 
either  of  his  own  or  anybody  else's. 

Salmasius,  however,  died,  though  from 
natural  causes,  and  his  reply  was  not  pub- 
lished till  after  the  Restoration,  when  the 
question  had  become,  what  it  has  ever  since 
remained,  academical. 

Other  pens  were  quicker,  and  to  their 
productions  Milton,  in  1654,  replied  with 
his  Second  Defence  of  the  English  People,  a 
tract  containing  autobiographical  details  of 
immense  interest  and  charm.  By  this  time 
he  was  totally  blind,  though,  with  a  touch 
of  that  personal  sensitiveness  ever  charac- 
teristic of  him,  he  is  careful  to  tell  Europe, 
in  the  Second  Defence,  that  externally  his 


34  JOHN  MILTON. 

eyes  were  uninjured,  and  shone  with  an  un- 
clouded light. 

Milton's  Defences  of  the  English  People 
are  rendered  provoking  by  his  extraordi- 
nary language  concerning  his  opponents. 
"Numskull,"  "beast,"  "fool,"  "puppy," 
"  knave,"  "  ass,"  "  mongrel-cur,"  are  but 
a  few  of  the  epithets  that  may  be  selected 
for  this  descriptive  catalogue.  This  is 
doubtless  mere  matter  of  pleading,  a  rule 
of  the  forum  where  controversies  between 
scholars  are  conducted  ;  but  for  that  very 
reason  it  makes  the  pamphlets  as  pro- 
voking to  an  ordinary  reader  as  an  old 
bill  of  complaint  in  Chancery  must  have 
been  to  an  impatient  suitor  who  wanted 
his  money.  The  main  issues,  when  cleared 
of  personalities,  are  important  enough,  and 
are  stated  by  Milton  with  great  clearness. 
'  Our  king  made  not  us,  but  we  him.  Na- 
ture has  given  fathers  to  us  all,  but  we 
ourselves  appointed  our  own  king ;  so  that 
the  people  is  not  for  the  king,  but  the  king 
for  them.'  It  was  made  a  matter  of  great 
offence  amongst  monarchs  and  monarchi- 
cal persons  that  Charles  was  subjected  to 
the  indignity  of  a  trial.  With  murders  and 


JOHN  MILTON.  35 

poisonings  kings  were  long  familiar.  These 
were  part  of  the  perils  of  the  voyage,  for 
which  they  were  prepared,  but,  as  Salma- 
sius  put  it,  '  for  a  king  to  be  arraigned  in 
a  court  of  judicature,  to  be  put  to  plead 
for  his  life,  to  have  sentence  of  death  pro- 
nounced against  him,  and  that  sentence 
executed,'  —  oh!  horrible  impiety.  To  this 
Milton  replies  :  '  Tell  me,  thou  superlative 
fool,  whether  it  be  not  more  just,  more 
agreeable  to  the  rules  of  humanity  and 
the  laws  of  all  human  societies,  to  bring 
a  criminal,  be  his  offence  what  it  will,  be- 
fore a  court  of  justice,  to  give  him  leave 
to  speak  for  himself,  and  if  the  law  con- 
demns him,  then  to  put  him  to  death  as 
he  has  deserved,  so  as  he  may  have  time 
to  repent  or  to  recollect  himself  ;  than 
presently,  as  soon  as  ever  he  is  taken,  to 
butcher  him  without  more  ado  ? ' 

But  a  king  of  any  spirit  would  probably 
answer  that  he  preferred  to  have  his  des- 
potism tempered  by  assassination  than  by 
the  mercy  of  a  court  of  John  Miltons.  To 
which  answer  Milton  would  have  rejoined, 
'  Despotism,  I  know  you  not,  since  we  are 
as  free  as  any  people  under  heaven.' 


36  JOHN  MILTON. 

The  weakest  part  in  Milton's  case  is  his 
having  to  admit  that  the  Parliament  was 
overawed  by  the  army,  which  he  says  was 
wiser  than  the  senators. 

Milton's  address  to  his  countrymen,  with 
which  he  concludes  the  first  defence,  is 
veritably  in  his  'grand  style  ' :  — 

'He  has  gloriously  delivered  you,  the 
first  of  nations,  from  the  two  greatest  mis- 
chiefs of  this  life  —  tyranny  and  super- 
stition. He  has  endued  you  with  great- 
ness of  mind  to  be  First  of  Mankind,  who 
after  having  confined  their  own  king  and 
having  had  him  delivered  into  their  hands, 
have  not  scrupled  to  condemn  him  judi- 
cially, and  pursuant  to  that  sentence  of 
condemnation  to  put  him  to  death.  After 
performing  so  glorious  an  action  as  this, 
you  ought  to  do  nothing  that 's  mean  and 
little  ;  you  ought  not  to  think  of,  much  less 
do,  anything  but  what  is  great  and  sublime. 
Which  to  attain  to,  this  is  your  only  way : 
as  you  have  subdued  your  enemies  in  the 
field,  so  to  make  it  appear  that  you  of  all 
mankind  are  best  able  to  subdue  Ambition, 
Avarice,  the  love  of  Riches,  and  can  best 
avoid  the  corruptions  that  prosperity  is  apt 


JOHN  MILTON.  37 

to  introduce.  These  are  the  only  argu- 
ments by  which  you  will  be  able  to  evince 
that  you  are  not  such  persons  as  this  fellow 
represents  you,  traitors,  robbers,  murderers, 
parricides,  madmen,  that  you  did  not  put 
your  king  to  death  out  of  any  ambitious 
design  —  that  it  was  not  an  act  of  fury  or 
madness,  but  that  it  was  wholly  out  of  love 
to  your  liberty,  your  religion,  to  justice, 
virtue,  and  your  country,  that  you  punished 
a  tyrant.  But  if  it  should  fall  out  other- 
wise (which  God  forbid),  if,  as  you  have 
been  valiant  in  war,  you  should  grow  de- 
bauched in  peace,  and  that  you  should  not 
have  learnt,  by  so  eminent,  so  remarkable 
an  example  before  your  eyes,  to  fear  God, 
and  work  righteousness ;  for  my  part  I 
shall  easily  grant  and  confess  (for  I  cannot 
deny  it),  whatever  ill  men  may  speak  or 
think  of  you,  to  be  very  true.  And  you 
will  find  in  time  that  God's  displeasure 
against  you  will  be  greater  than  it  has 
been  against  your  adversaries  —  greater 
than  His  grace  and  favour  have  been  to 
yourselves,  which  you  have  had  larger  ex- 
perience of  than  any  other  nation  under 
heaven.' 


38  JOHN  MILTON. 

This  controversy  naturally  excited  great- 
er interest  abroad,  where  Latin  was  famil- 
iarly known,  than  ever  it  did  here  at  home. 
Though  it  cost  Milton  his  sight,  or  at  all 
events  accelerated  the  hour  of  his  blind- 
ness, he  appears  greatly  to  have  enjoyed 
conducting  a  high  dispute  in  the  face  of 
Europe.  '  I  am,'  so  he  says,  '  spreading 
abroad  amongst  the  cities,  the  kingdoms, 
and  nations,  the  restored  culture  of  civil- 
ity and  freedom  of  life.'  We  certainly 
managed  in  this  affair  of  the  execution  of 
Charles  to  get  rid  of  that  note  of  insularity 
which  renders  our  politics  uninviting  to 
the  stranger. 

Milton,  despite  his  blindness,  remained 
in  the  public  service  until  after  the  death 
of  Cromwell ;  in  fact,  he  did  not  formally 
resign  until  after  the  Restoration.  He 
played  no  part,  having  none  to  play,  in  the 
performances  that  occurred  between  those 
events.  He  poured  forth  pamphlets,  tmt 
there  is  no  reason  to  believe  that  they  were 
read  otherwise  than  carelessly  and  by  few. 
His  ideas  were  his  own,  and  never  had  a 
chance  of  becoming  fruitful.  There  seemed 
to  him  to  be  a  ready  and  an  easy  way  to 


JOHN  MILTON.  39 

establish  a  free  Commonwealth,  but  on 
the  whole  it  turned  out  that  the  easiest 
thing  to  do  was  to  invite  Charles  Stuart  to 
reascend  the  throne  of  his  ancestors,  which 
he  did,  and  Milton  went  into  hiding. 

It  is  terrible  to  think  how  risky  the  sit- 
uation was.  Milton  was  undoubtedly  in 
danger  of  his  life,  and  Paradise  Lost  was 
unwritten.  He  was  for  a  time  under  ar- 
rest. But  after  all  he  was  not  one  of  the 
regicides  —  he  was  only  a  scribe  who  had 
defended  regicide.  Neither  was  he  a  man 
well  associated.  He  was  a  solitary,  and, 
for  the  most  part,  an  unpopular  thinker, 
and  blind  withal.  He  was  left  alone  for 
the  rest  of  his  clays.  He  lived  first  in 
Jewin  Street,  off  Aldersgate  Street,  and 
finally  in  Artillery  Walk,  Bunhill  Fields. 
He  had  married,  four  years  after  his  first 
wife's  death,  a  lady  who  died  within  a 
twelvemonth,  though  her  memory  is  kept 
ever  fresh,  generation  after  generation,  by 
her  husband's  sonnet  beginning, 

'  Methought  I  saw  my  late  espoused  saint.' 

Dr.  Johnson,  it  is  really  worth  remember- 
ing, called  this  a  poor  sonnet.  In  1664 


4O  JOHN  MILTON. 

Milton  married  a  third  and  last  wife,  a  lady 
he  had  never  seen,  and  who  survived  her 
husband  for  no  less  a  period  than  fifty- 
three  years,  not  dying  till  the  year,  1727. 
The  poet's  household,  like  his  country, 
never  realised  any  of  his  ideals.  His  third 
wife  took  decent  care  of  him,  and  there 
the  matter  ended.  He  did  not  belong  to 
the  category  of  adored  fathers.  His  daugh- 
ters did  not  love  him  —  it  seems  even 
probable  they  disliked  him.  Mr.  Pattison 
has  pointed  out  that  Milton  never  was  on 
terms  even  with  the  scholars  of  his  age. 
Political  acquaintances  he  had  none.  He 
was,  in  puritan  language,  '  unconnected 
with  any  place  of  worship,'  and  had  there- 
fore no  pastoral  visits  to  receive,  or  ser- 
mons to  discuss.  The  few  friends  he  had 
were  mostly  young  men  who  were  attracted 
to  him,  and  were  glad  to  give  him  their 
company  ;  and  it  is  well  that  he  had  this 
pleasure,  for  he  was  ever  in  his  wishes  a 
social  man  —  not  intended  to  live  alone, 
and  blindness  must  have  made  society  lit- 
tle short  of  a  necessity  for  him. 

Now  it  was,  in  the  evening  of  his  days, 
with  a  Stuart  once  more  upon  the  throne, 


JOHN  MILTON.  41 

and  Episcopacy  finally  installed,  that  Mil- 
ton, a  defeated  thinker,  a  baffled  pamphlet- 
eer—  for  had  not  Salmasius  triumphed? 
—  with  Horton  and  Italy  far,  far  behind 
him,  set  himself  to  keep  the  promise  of  his 
glorious  youth,  and  compose  a  poem  the 
world  should  not  willingly  let  die.  His 
manner  of  life  was  this.  In  summer  he 
rose  at  four,  in  winter  at  five.  He  went  to 
bed  at  nine.  He  began  the  day  with  hav- 
ing the  Hebrew  Scriptures  read  to  him. 
Then  he  contemplated.  At  seven  his  man 
came  to  him  again,  and  read  and  wrote  till 
an  early  dinner.  For  exercise  he  either 
walked  in  the  garden  or  swung  in  a  ma- 
chine. Besides  conversation,  his  only  other 
recreation  was  music.  He  played  the  or- 
gan and  the  bass  viol.  He  would  some- 
times sing  himself.  After  recreation  of 
this  kind  he  would  return  to  his  study  to 
be  read  to  till  six.  After  six  his  friends 
were  admitted,  and  would  sit  with  him  till 
eight.  At  eight  he  had  his  supper  —  olives 
or  something  light.  He  was  very  abstemi- 
ous. After  supper  he  smoked  a  pipe  of 
tobacco,  drank  a  glass  of  water,  and  went 
to  bed.  He  found  the  night  a  favourable 


42  JOHN  MILTON. 

time  for  composition,  and  what  he  com- 
posed at  night  he  dictated  in  the  day,  sit- 
ting obliquely  in  an  elbow  chair  with  his 
leg  thrown  over  the  arm. 

In  1664  Paradise  Lost  was  finished,  but 
as  in  1665  came  the  Great  Plague,  and 
after  the  Great  Plague  the  Great  Fire,  it 
was  long  before  the  MS.  found  its  way 
into  the  hands  of  the  licenser.  It  is  inter- 
esting to  note  that  the  first  member  of  the 
general'  public  who  read  Paradise  Lost,  I 
hope  all  through,  was  a  clergyman  of  the 
name  of  Tomkyns,  the  deputy  of  the  Arch- 
bishop of  Canterbury,  Dr.  Sheldon.  The 
Archbishop  was  the  State  Licenser  for  re- 
ligious books,  but  of  course  did  not  do  the 
work  himself.  Tomkyns  did  the  work,  and 
was  for  a  good  while  puzzled  what  to  make 
of  the  old  Republican's  poem.  At  last, 
and  after  some  singularly  futile  criticisms, 
Tomkyns  consented  to  allow  of  the  pub- 
lication of  Paradise  Lost,  which  accord- 
ingly appeared  in  1667,  admirably  printed, 
and  at  the  price  of  $s.  a  copy.  The  au- 
thor's agreement  with  the  publisher  is  in 
writing  —  as  Mr.  Besant  tells  us  all  agree- 
ments with  publishers  should  be  —  and 


JOHN  MILTON.  43 

may  be  seen  in  the  British  Museum.  Its 
terms  are  clear.  The  poet  was  to  have 
^5  down  ;  another  ^5  when  the  first  edi- 
tion, which  was  not  to  exceed  1,500  copies, 
was  sold  ;  a  third  ^5  when  a  second  edi- 
tion was  sold ;  and  a  fourth  and  last  £$ 
when  a  third  edition  was  sold.  He  got 
his  first  ^5,  also  his  second,  and  after  his 
death  his  widow  sold  all  her  rights  for  £8. 
Consequently  £18,  which  represents  per- 
haps £$o  of  our  present  currency,  was 
Milton's  share  of  all  the  money  that  has 
been  made  by  the  sale  of  his  great  poem. 
But  the  praise  is  still  his.  The  sale  was 
very  considerable.  The  '  general  reader ' 
no  doubt  preferred  the  poems  of  Cleave- 
land  and  Flatman,  but  Milton  found  an 
audience  which  was  fit  and  not  fewer  than 
ever  is  the  case  when  noble  poetry  is  first 
produced. 

Paradise  Regained  was  begun  upon  the 
completion  of  Paradise  Lost,  and  appeared 
with  Samson  Agonistes  in  1671,  and  here 
ended  Milton's  life  as  a  producing  poet. 
He  lived  on  till  Sunday,  8th  November, 
1674,  when  the  gout,  or  what  was  then 
called  gout,  struck  in  and  he  died,  and  was 


44  JOHN  MILTON. 

buried  beside  his  father  in  the  Church  of 
St.  Giles's,  Cripplegate.  He  remained  la- 
borious to  the  last,  and  imposed  upon  him- 
self all  kinds  of  drudgery,  compiling  dic- 
tionaries, histories  of  Britain  and  Russia. 
He  must  have  worked  not  so  much  from 
love  of  his  subjects  as  from  dread  of  idle- 
ness. But  he  had  hours  of  relaxation,  of 
social  intercourse,  and  of  music  ;  and  it  is 
pleasant  to  remember  that  one  pipe  of  to- 
bacco. It  consecrates  your  own. 

Against  Milton's  great  poem  it  is  some- 
times alleged  that  it  is  not  read  ;  and  yet  it 
must,  I  think,  be  admitted  that  for  one  per- 
son who  has  read  Spenser's  Fairy  Queen, 
ten  thousand  might  easily  be  found  who 
have  read  Paradise  Lost.  Its  popularity 
has  been  widespread.  Mr.  Mark  Pattison 
and  Mr.  John  Bright  measure  some  ground 
between  them.  No  other  poem  can  be 
mentioned  which  has  so  coloured  English 
thought  as  Milton's,  and  yet,  according  to 
the  French  senator  whom  Mr.  Arnold  has 
introduced  to  the  plain  reader,  '  Paradise 
Lost  is  a  false  poem,  a  grotesque  poem,  a 
tiresome  poem.'  It  is  not  easy  for  those 
who  have  a  touch  of  Milton's  temper  though 


JOHN  MILTON.  45 

none  of  his  genius  to  listen  to  this  foreign 
criticism  quite  coolly.  Milton  was  very 
angry  with  Salmasius  for  venturing  to  find 
fault  with  the  Long  Parliament  for  having 
repealed  so  many  laws,  and  so  far  forgot 
himself  as  to  say,  '  Nam  nostra  leges,  Ole, 
quid  ad  te  ? '  But  there  is  nothing  muni- 
cipal about  Paradise  Lost.  All  the  world 
has  a  right  to  be  interested  in  it  and  to  find 
fault  with  it.  But  the  fact  that  the  people 
for  whom  primarily  it  was  written  have 
taken  it  to  their  hearts  and  have  it  on  their 
lips  ought  to  have  prevented  it  being  called 
tiresome  by  a  senator  of  France. 

But  what  is  the  matter  with  our  great 
epic  ?  That  nobody  ever  wished  it  longer 
is  no  real  accusation.  Nobody  ever  did 
wish  an  epic  longer.  The  most  popular 
books  in  the  world  are  generally  accounted 
too  long,  —  Don  Quixote,  the  Pilgrims 
Progress,  Tom  Jones.  But,  says  Mr.  Ar- 
nold, the  whole  real  interest  of  the  poem 
depends  upon  our  being  able  to  take  it  lit- 
erally ;  and  again,  '  Merely  as  matter  of 
poetry,  the  story  of  the  Fall  has  no  special 
force  or  effectiveness  —  its  effectiveness 
for  us  comes,  and  can  only  come,  from  our 


46  JOHN  MILTON. 

taking  it  all  as  the  literal  narrative  of  what 
positively  happened.'  These  bewildering 
utterances  make  one  rub  one's  eyes.  Car- 
lyle  comes  to  our  relief  :  •'  All  which  prop- 
ositions I  for  the  present  content  myself 
with  modestly  but  peremptorily  and  irre- 
vocably denying.' 

Mr.  Pattison  surely  speaks  the  language 
of  ordinary  good  sense  when  he  writes, 
'  For  the  world  of  Paradise  Lost  is  an 
ideal,  conventional  world  quite  as  much  as 
the  world  of  the  Arabian  Nights,  or  the 
world  of  the  chivalrous  romance,  or  that  of 
the  pastoral  novel.' 

Coleridge,  in  the  twenty-second  chapter 
of  the  Biographia  Literaria,  points  out 
that  the  fable  and  characters  of  Paradise 
Lost  are  not  derived  from  Scripture,  as  in 
the  Messiah  of  Klopstock,  but  merely  sug- 
gested by  it  —  the  illusion  on  which  all 
poetry  is  founded  being  thus  never  contra- 
dicted. The  poem  proceeds  upon  a  legend, 
ancient  and  fascinating,  and  to  call  it  a 
commentary  upon  a  few  texts  in  Genesis 
is  a  marvellous  criticism. 

The  story  of  the  Fall  of  Man,  as  re- 
corded in  the  Semitic  legend,  is  to  me 


JOHN  "MILTON.  47 

more  attractive  as  a  story  than  the  Tale  of 
Troy,  and  I  find  the  rebellion  of  Satan  and 
his  dire  revenge  more  to  my  mind  than  the 
circles  of  Dante.  Eve  is,  I  think,  more  in- 
teresting than  '  Heaven-born  Helen,  Spar- 
ta's queen,'  —  I  mean  in  herself,  and  as  a 
woman  to  write  poetry  about. 

The  execution  of  the  poem  is  another 
matter.  So  far  as  style  is  concerned  its 
merits  have  not  yet  been  questioned.  As 
a  master  of  style  and  diction,  Milton  is  as 
safe  as  Virgil.  The  handling  of  the  story 
is  more  vulnerable.  The  long  speeches 
put  in  the  mouth  of  the  Almighty  are 
never  pleasing,  and  seldom  effective.  The 
weak  point  about  argument  is  that  it  usu- 
ally admits  of  being  answered.  For  Mil- 
ton to  essay  to  justify  the  ways  of  God  to 
man  was  well  and  pious  enough,  but  to 
represent  God  Himself  as  doing  so  by  ar- 
gumentative process  was  not  so  well,  and 
was  to  expose  the  Almighty  to  possible  re- 
buff. The  king  is  always  present  in  his 
own  courts,  but  as  judge,  not  as  advocate  ; 
hence  the  royal  dignity  never  suffers. 

It  is  narrated  of  an  eminent  barrister, 
who  became  a  most  polished  judge,  Mr. 


48  JOHN  MILTON. 

Knight  Bruce,  that  once,  when  at  the  very 
head  of  his  profession,  he  was  taken  in  be- 
fgre  a  Master  in  Chancery,  an  office  since 
abolished,  and  found  himself  pitted  against 
a  little  snip  of  an  attorney's  clerk,  scarce 
higher  than  the  table,  who,  nothing  daunt- 
ed, and  by  the  aid  of  authorities  he  cited 
from  a  bundle  of  books  as  big  as  himself, 
succeeded  in  worsting  Knight  Bruce,  whom 
he  persisted  in  calling  over  and  over  again 
'  my  learned  friend.'  Mr.  Bruce  treated 
the  imp  with  that  courtesy  which  is  always 
an  opponent's  due,  but  he  never  went  be- 
fore the  Masters  any  more. 

The  Archangel  has  not  escaped  the  re- 
proach often  brought  against  affable  per- 
sons of  being  a  bit  of  a  bore,  and  though 
this  is  to  speak  unbecomingly,  it  must  be 
owned  that  the  reader  is  glad  whenever 
Adam  plucks  up  heart  of  grace  and  gets 
in  a  word  edgeways.  Mr.  Bagehot  has 
complained  of  Milton's  angels.  He  says 
they  are  silly.  But  this  is,  I  think,  to  in- 
tellectualise  too  much.  There  are  some 
classes  who  are  fairly  exempted  from  all 
obligation  to  be  intelligent,  and  these  airy 
messengers  are  surely  amongst  that  num- 


JOHN' MILTON.  49 

ber.  Tfye  retinue  of  a  prince  or  of  a  bride 
justify  their  choice  if  they  are  well-looking 
and  group  nicely. 

But  these  objections  do  not  touch  the 
main  issue.  Here  is  the  story  of  the  loss 
of  Eden,  told  enchantingly,  musically,  and 
in  the  grand  style.  '  Who,'  says  M.  Scherer, 
in  a  passage  quoted  by  Mr.  Arnold,  '  can 
read  the  eleventh  and  twelfth  books  with- 
out yawning  ? '  People,  of  course,  are  free 
to  yawn  when  they  please,  provided  they 
put  their  hands  to  their  mouths  ;  but  in 
answer  to  this  insulting  question,  one  is 
glad  to  be  able  to  remember  how  Cole- 
ridge has  singled  out  Adam's  vision  of 
future  events  contained  in  these  books  as 
especially  deserving  of  attention.  But  to 
read  them  is  to  repel  the  charge. 

There  was  no  need  for  Mr.  Arnold,  of 
all  men,  to  express  dissatisfaction  with 
Milton  — 

'  Words  which  no  ear  ever  to  hear  in  heaven 
Expected ;  least  of  all  from  thee,  ingrate, 
In  place  thyself  so  high  above  thy  peers.' 

The  first  thing  for  people  to  be  taught 
is  to  enjoy  great  things  greatly.  The  spots 
on  the  sun  may  be  an  interesting  study, 


50  JOHN  MILTON. 

but  anyhow  the  sun  is  not  all  spots.  In- 
deed, sometimes  in  the  early  year,  when 
he  breaks  forth  afresh, 

'  And  winter,  slumbering  in  the  open  air, 
Wears  on  her  smiling  face  a  dream  of  spring,' 

we  are  apt  to  forget  that  he  has  any  spots 
at  all,  and,  as  he  shines,  are  perhaps  re- 
minded of  the  blind  poet  sitting  in  his 
darkness,  in  this  prosaic  city  of  ours,  swing- 
ing his  leg  over  the  arm  of  his  chair,  and 
dictating  the  lines  — 

'  Seasons  return,  but  not  to  me  returns 
Day,  or  the  sweet  approach  of  even  or  morn, 
Or  sight  of  vernal  bloom  or  summer's  rose, 
Or  flocks  or  herds,  or  human  face  divine. 
But  cloud  instead,  and  ever-during  dark 
Surrounds  me  —  from  the  cheerful  ways  of  men 
Cut  off ;  and  for  the  book  of  knowledge  fair 
Presented  with  a  universal  blank 
Of  nature's  works,  to  me  expunged  and  razed, 
And  wisdom  at  one  entrance  quite  shut  out. 
So  much  the  rather,  Thou,  Celestial  Light, 
Shine  inwards,  and  the  mind  through  all  her  powers 
Irradiate  —  there  "plant  eyes  ;  all  mist  from  thence 
Purge  and  disperse,  that  I  may  see  and  tell 
Of  things  invisible  to  mortal  sight.' 

Coleridge  added  a  note  to  his  beautiful 
poem  '  The  Nightingale,'  lest  he  should  be 
supposed  capable  of  speaking  with  levity 


JOHN  MILTON.  51 

of  a  single  line  in  Milton.  The  note  was 
hardly  necessary,  but  one  loves  the  spirit 
that  prompted  him  to  make  it.  Sainte- 
Beuve  remarks  :  '  Parler  des  poetes  est 
toujours  une  chose  bien  delicate,  et  sur- 
tout  quand  on  1'a  £t6  un  peu  soi-meme.' 
But  though  it  does  not  matter  what  the 
little  poets  do, ,  great  ones  should  never 
pass  one  another  without  a  royal  salute. 


POPE. 

THE  eighteenth  century  has  been  well 
abused  by  the  nineteenth.  So  far  as  I  can 
gather,  it  is  the  settled  practice  of  every 
century  to  speak  evil  of  her  immediate  pre- 
decessor, and  I  have  small  doubt  that,  had 
we  gone  groping  about  in  the  tenth  century, 
we  should  yet  have  been  found  hinting  that 
the  ninth  was  darker  than  she  had  any  need 
to  be. 

But  our  tone  of  speaking  about  the  last 
century  has  lately  undergone  an  alteration. 
The  fact  is,  we  are  drawing  near  our  own 
latter  end.  The  Head  Master  of  Harrow 
lately  thrilled  an  audience  by  informing 
them  that  he  had,  that  very  day,  entered  an 
existing  bond  fide  boy  upon  the  school 
books,  whose  education,  however,  would  not 
begin  till  the  twentieth  century.  As  a 
parent  was  overheard  to  observe,  '  an  illus- 
tration of  that  sort  comes  home  to  one.' 


POPE.  53 

The  older  we  grow  the  less  confident  we 
become,  the  readier  to  believe  that  our 
judgments  are  probably  wrong,  and  liable, 
and  even  likely,  to  be  reversed  ;  the  better 
disposed  to  live  and  let  live.  The  child, 
as  Mr.  Browning  has  somewhere  elaborated, 
cries  for  the  moon  and  beats  its  nurse,  but 
the  old  man  sips  his  gruel , with  avidity  and 
thanks  Heaven  if  nobody  beats  him.  And 
so  we  have  left  off  beating  the  eighteenth 
century.  It  was  not  so,  however,  in  our 
lusty  prime.  Carlyle,  historian  though  he 
was  of  Frederick  the  Great  and  the  French 
Revolution,  revenged  himself  for  the 
trouble  it  gave  him  by  loading  it  with  all 
vile  epithets.  If  it  had  been  a  cock  or  a 
cook  he  could  not.  have  called  it  harder 
names.  It  was  century  spendthrift,  fraud- 
ulent bankrupt,  a  swindler  century,  which 
did  but  one  true  action,  "  namely,  to  blow 
its  brains  out  in  that  grand  universal  sui- 
cide named  French  Revolution." 

The  leaders  of  the  neo-Catholic  move- 
ment very  properly  shuddered  at  a  cen- 
tury which  whitewashed  its  churches  and 
thought  even  monthly  communions  affected. 
The  ardent  Liberal  could  not  but  despise 


54  POPE. 

a  century  which  did  without  the  franchise, 
and,  despite  the  most  splendid  materials, 
had  no  Financial  Reform  Almanack.  The 
sentimental  Tory  found  little  to  please  him 
in  the  House  of  Hanover  and  Whig  domina- 
tion. The  lovers  of  poetry,  with  Shelley 
in  their  ears  and  Wordsworth  at  their 
hearts,  made  merry  with  the  trim  muses  of 
Queen  Anne,  with  their  sham  pastorals, 
their  dilapidated  classicism,  and  still  more 
with  their  town-bred  descriptions  of  the 
country,  with  its  purling  brooks,  and  nod- 
ding groves,  and,  hanging  over  all,  the 
moon  —  not  Shelley's  'orbed  maiden,'  but 
'the  refulgent  lamp  of  night.'  And  so, 
on  all  hands,  the  poor  century  was  weighed 
in  a  hundred  different  balances  and  found 
wanting.  It  lacked  inspiration,  unction, 
and  generally  all  those  things  for  which  it 
was  thought  certain  the  twentieth  century 
would  commend  us.  But  we  do  not  talk 
like  that  now.  The  waters  of  the  sullen 
Lethe,  rolling  doom,  are  sounding  too  loud- 
ly in  our  own  ears.  We  would  die  at  peace 
with  all  centuries.  Mr.  Frederick  Harri- 
son writes  a  formal  Defence  of  the  Eight- 
eenth Century.  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold  re- 


POPE.  55 

prints  half-a-dozen  of  Dr.  Johnson's  Lives 
of  the  Poets.  Mr.  Leslie  Stephen  com- 
poses a  history  of  thought  during  this  ob- 
jurgated period,  and  also  edits,  in  sump- 
tuously inconvenient  volumes,  the  works 
of  its  two  great  novelists,  Richardson  and 
Fielding ;  and,  finally,  there  now  trembles 
on  the  very  verge  of  completion  a  splendid 
and  long-laboured  edition  of  the  poems  and 
letters  of  the  great  poet  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  the  abstract  and  brief  chronicle  of 
his  time,  a  man  who  had  some  of  its  vir- 
tues and  most  of  its  vices,  one  whom  it  is 
easy  to  hate,  but  still  easier  to  quote  — 
Alexander  Pope. 

Twenty  years  ago  the  chances  were  that 
a  lecture  on  Pope  began  by  asking  the, 
perhaps  not  impertinent,  question, '  Was  he 
a  poet  ? '  And  the  method  had  its  merits, 
for  the  question  once  asked  it  was  easy 
for  the  lecturer,  like  an  incendiary  who  has 
just  fired  a  haystack,  to  steal  away  amidst 
the  cracklings  of  a  familiar  controversy.  It 
was  not  unfitting  that  so  quarrelsome  a  man 
as  Pope  should  have  been  the  occasion  of 
so  much  quarrelsomeness  in  others.  For 
long  the  battle  waged  as  fiercely  over 


56  POPE. 

Pope's  poetry  as  erst  it  did  in  his  own 
Homer  over  the  body  of  the  slain  Patroclus. 
Stout  men  took  part  in  it,  notably  Lord 
Byron,  whose  letters  to  Mr.  Bowles  on  the 
subject,  though  composed  in  his  lordship's 
most  ruffianly  vein,  still  make  good  read- 
ing —  of  a  sort.  But  the  battle  is  over,  at 
all  events  for  the  present.  It  is  not  now 
our  humour  to  inquire  too  curiously  about 
first  causes  or  primal  elements.  As  we  are 
not  prepared  with  a  definition  of  poetry, 
we  feel  how  impossible  it  would  be  for  us 
to  deny  the  rank  of  a  poet  to  one  whose 
lines  not  infrequently  scan  and  almost  al- 
ways rhyme.  For  my  part,  I  should  as 
soon  think  of  asking  whether  a  centipede 
has  legs  or  a  wasp  a  sting  as  whether  the 
author  of  the  Rape  of  tJie  Lock  and  the 
Epistle  to  Dr.  Arbuthnot  was  or  was  not  a 
poet. 

Pope's  life  has  been  described  as  a  suc- 
cession of  petty  secrets  and  third-rate 
problems,  but  there  seems  to  be  no  doubt 
that  it  began  on  May  2ist,  1688,  in  Lom- 
bard Street,  in  the  city  of  London.  But 
this  event  over,  mystery  steps  in  with  the 
question,  What  was  his  father  ?  The  occu- 


POPE.  57 

pation  of  the  elder  Pope  occasioned  nearly 
as  fierce  a  controversy  as  the  poetical  legit- 
imacy of  the  younger.  Malice  has  even 
hinted  that  old  Pope  was  a  hatter.  The 
poet,  of  course,  knew,  but  would  n't  tell, 
being  always  more  ready,  as  Johnson  ob- 
serves, to  say  what  his  father  was  not  than 
what  he  was.  He  denied  the  hatter,  and 
said  his  father  was  of  the  family  of  the 
Earls  of  Downe  ;  but  on  this  statement 
being  communicated  to  a  relative  of  the 
poet,  the  brutal  fellow,  who  was  probably 
without  a  tincture  of  polite  learning,  said 
he  heard  of  the  relationship  for  the  first 
time  !  '  Hard  as  thy  heart,  and  as  thy 
birth  obscure,'  sang  one  of  Pope's  too  nu- 
merous enemies  in  the  easy  numbers  he 
had  taught  his  age.  It  is,  however,  now 
taken  as  settled  that  the  elder  Pope,  like 
Izaak  Walton  and  John  Gilpin,  and  many 
other  good  fellows,  was  a  linen-draper. 
He  made  money,  and  one  would  like  to 
know  how  he  did  it  in  the  troublesome 
times  he  lived  in  ;  but  his  books  have  all 
perished.  He  was  a  Roman  Catholic,  as 
also  was  the  poet's  mother,  who  was  her 
husband's  second  wife,  and  came  out  of 


58  POPE. 

Yorkshire.  It  used  to  be  confidently  as- 
serted that  the  elder  Pope,  on  retiring  from 
business,  which  he  did  early  in  the  poet's 
childhood,  put  his  fortune  in  a  box  and 
spent  it  as  he  needed  it,  —  a  course  of  con- 
duct the  real  merits  of  which  are  likely  to 
be  hid  from  a  lineal  descendant.  Old  Pope, 
however,  did  nothing  of  the  kind,  but  in- 
vested money  in  the  French  funds,  his 
conscience  not  allowing  him  to  do  so  in 
the  English,  and  he  also  lent  sums  on  bond 
to  fellow  Catholics,  one  of  whom  used  to 
remit  him  his  half-year's  interest  calcu- 
lated at  the  rate  of  -£4.  per  cent,  per  an- 
num, whereas  by  the  terms  of  the  bond  he 
was  to  pay  £4k  Per  cent,  per  annum.  On 
another  occasion  the  same  borrower  de- 
ducted from  the  interest  accrued  due  a 
pound  he  said  he  had  lent  the  youthful 
poet.  These  things  annoyed  the  old  gen- 
tleman,  as  they  would  most  old  gentlemen 
of  my  acquaintance.  The  poet  was  the 
only  child  of  his  mother,  and  a  queerly 
constituted  mortal  he  was.  Dr.  Johnson 
has  recorded  the  long  list  of  his  infirmities 
with  an  almost  chilling  bluntness ;  but 
alas !  so  malformed  was  Pope's  character, 


POPE.  59 

so  tortuous  and  twisted  were  his  ways,  so 
elaborately  artificial  and  detestably  petty 
many  of  his  devices,  that  it  is  not  malice 
but  charity  that  bids  us  remember  that, 
during  his  whole  maturity,  he  could  neither 
dress  nor  undress  himself,  go  to  bed  or  get 
up  without  help,  and  that  on  rising  he  had 
to  be  invested  into  a  stiff  canvas  bodice 
and  tightly  laced,  and  have  put  on  him  a 
fur  doublet  and  numerous  stockings  to  keep 
off  the  cold  and  fill  out  his  shrunken  form. 
If  ever  there"  was  a  man  whose  life  was  one 
long  provocation  that  man  was  the  author 
of  the  Dunciad.  Pope  had  no  means  of 
self-defence  save  his  wit.  Dr.  Johnson  was 
a  queer  fellow  enough,  having  inherited,  as 
he  tells  us,  a  vile  melancholy  from  his  fa- 
ther, and  he  certainly  was  no  Adonis  to 
look  at,  but  those  who  laughed  at  him  were 
careful  to  do  so  behind  his  gigantic  back. 
When  a  rapacious  bookseller  insulted  him 
he  knocked  him  down.  When  the  carica- 
turist Foote  threatened  to  take  him  off 
upon  the  stage,  the  most  Christian  of  lexi- 
cographers caused  it  to  be  intimated  to 
him  that  if  he  did  the  author  of  Rasselas 
would  thrash  him  in  the  public  street,  and 


60  POPE. 

the  buffoon  desisted.  '  Did  not  Foote/ 
asked  Boswell,  'think  of  exhibiting  you, 
sir  ? '  and  our  great  moralist  replied,  '  Sir, 
fear  restrained  him,  he  knew  I  would  have 
broken  his  bones.'  When  he  denounced 
Macpherson  for  his  Ossian  frauds,  and  the 
irate  Celt  said  something  about  personal 
chastisement,  Johnson  told  him,  in  writing, 
that  he  was  not  to  be  deterred  from  detect- 
ing a  cheat  by  the  menaces  of  a  ruffian, 
and  by  way  of  a  temporary  provision  for 
his  self-defence  selected  a  most  grievous 
cudgel,  six  feet  in  height,  and  terminating 
in  a  head  (once  the  root)  of  the  size  of  a 
large  orange.  The  possession  of  great 
physical  strength  is  no  mean  assistance  to 
a  straightforward  life.  The  late  Professor 
Fawcett,  who,  though  blind,  delighted, 
arm-in-arm  with  a  friend,  to  skate  furiously 
on  the  fens,  never  could  be  brought  to 
share  the  fears  entertained  on  his  behalf 
by  some  of  the  less  stalwart  of  his  acquaint- 
ances. 'Why,'  he  used 'to  exclaim  apolo- 
getically, '  even  if  I  do  run  up  against  any- 
body, it  is  always  the  other  fellow  who  gets 
the  worst  of  it.'  But  poor  Pope,  whom  a 
child  could  hustle,  had  no  such  resources. 


POPE.  6 1 

We  should  always  remember  this,  it  is  bru- 
tal to  forget  it. 

Pope's  parents  found  in  their  only  son 
the  vocation  of  their  later  life.  He  might 
be  anything  he  liked.  Did  he  lisp  in  num- 
bers, the  boyish  rhymes  were  duly  scanned 
and  criticised  ;  had  he  a  turn  for  painting, 
lessons  were  provided.  He  might  be  any- 
thing he  chose,  and  everything  by  turns. 
Many  of  us  have  been  lately  reading  chap- 
ters from  the  life  of  another  only  son,  and 
though  the  comparison  may  not  bear  work- 
ing out,  still,  that  there  were  points  of 
strong  similarity  between  the  days  of  the 
youthful  poet  at-  Binfield  and  those  •  of 
Ruskin  at  Herne  Hill  may  be  suspected. 
Pope's  education  was,  of  course,  private, 
for  a  double  reason  —  his  proscribed  faith 
and  his  frail  form.  Mr.  Leslie  Stephen, 
with  a  touching  faith  in  public  schools,  has 
the  .hardihood  to  regret  that  it  was  ob- 
viously impossible  to  send  Pope  to  West- 
minster. One  shudders  at  the  thought. 
It  could  only  have  ended  in  an  inquest. 
As  it  was,  the  poor  little  cripple  was 
whipped  at  Twyford  for  lampooning  his 
master.  Pope  was  extraordinarily  sensi- 


62  POPE. 

tive.  Cruelty  to  animals  he  abhorred. 
Every  kind  of  sport,  from  spinning  cock- 
chafers to  coursing  hares,  he  held  in  loath- 
ing, and  one  cannot  but  be  thankful  that 
the  childhood  of  this  super-sensitive  poet 
was  shielded  from  the  ruffianism  of  the 
nether  world  of  boys  as  that  brood  then 
existed.  Westminster  had  not  long  to 
wait  for  Cowper.  Pope  was  taught  his 
rudiments  by  stray  priests  and  at  small 
seminaries,  where,  at  all  events,  he  had  his 
bent,  and  escaped  the  contagious  error 
that  Homer  wrote  in  Greek  in  order  that 
English  boys  might  be  beaten.  Of  course 
he  did  not  become  a  scholar.  Had  he  done 
so  he  probably  would  not  have  translated 
Homer,  though  he  might  have  lectured  on 
how  not  to  do  it.  Indeed,  the  only  evi- 
dence we  have  that  Pope  knew  Greek  at 
all  is  that. he  translated  Homer,  and  was 
accustomed  to  carry  about  with  him  a 
small  pocket  edition  of  the  bard  in  the 
original.  Latin  he  could  probably  read 
with  decent  comfort,  though  it  is  notice- 
able that  if  he  had  occasion  to  refer  to  a 
Latin  book,  and  there  was  a  French  trans- 
lation, he  preferred  the  latter  version  to 


POPE.  63 

the  original.  Voltaire,  who  knew  Pope, 
asserts  that  he  could  not  speak  a  word  of 
French,  and  could  hardly  read  it  ;  but  Vol- 
taire was  not  a  truthful  man,  and  on  one 
occasion  told  lies  in  an  affidavit.  The  fact 
is,  Pope's  curiosity  was  too  inordinate  — 
his  desire  to  know  everything  all  at  once 
too  strong  to  admit  of  the  delay  of  learning 
a  foreign  language ;  and  he  was  conse- 
quently a  reader  of  translations,  and  he 
lived  in  an  age  of  translations.  He  was, 
as  a  boy,  a  simply  ferocious  reader,  and 
was  early  acquainted  with  the  contents  of 
the  great  poets,  both  of  antiquity  and  the 
modern  world.  His  studies,  at  once  in- 
tense, prolonged,  and  exciting,  injured  his 
feeble  health,  and  made  him  the  lifelong 
sufferer  he  was.  It  was  a  noble  zeal,  and 
arose  from  the  immense  interest  Pope  ever 
took  in  human  things. 

From  170x3  to  1715,  that  is,  from  his 
fourteenth  to  his  twenty-ninth  year,  he 
lived  with  his  father  and  mother  at  Bin- 
field,  on  the  borders  of  Windsor  Forest, 
which  he  made  the  subject  of  one  of  his 
early  poems,  against  which  it  was  alleged, 
with  surely  some  force,  that  it  has  nothing 


64  POPE. 

distinctive  about  it,  and  might  as  easily 
have  been  written  about  any  other  forest ; 
to  which,  however,  Dr.  Johnson  character- 
istically replied  that  the  onus  lay  upon  the 
critic  of  first  proving  that  there  is  anything 
distinctive  about  Windsor  Forest,  which 
personally  he  doubted,  one  green  field  in  the 
Doctor's  opinion  being  just  like  another. 
In  1715  Pope  moved  with  his  parents  to 
Chiswick,  where  in  1717,  his  father,  aged 
seventy-five,  died.  The  following  year  the 
poet  again  moved  with  his  mother  to  the 
celebrated  villa  at  Twickenham,  where  in 
1733  she  died,  in  her  ninety-third  year. 
Ten  years  later  Pope's  long  disease,  his 
life,  came  to  its  appointed  end.  His  poet- 
ical dates  may  be  briefly  summarised  thus : 
his  Pastorals,  1709  ;  the  Essay  on  Criticism t 
1711  ;  the  first  version  of  the  Rape  of  the 
Lock,  1712;  the  second,  1714;  the  Iliad, 
begun  in  1715,  was  finished  1720;  Eloisa, 
1717;  the  Elegy  to  the  memory  of  an 
Unfortunate  Lady  and  the  Dunciad,  1728; 
the  Essay  on  Man,  1732;  and  then  the 
Epistles  and  Satires.  Of  all  Pope's  biog- 
raphers, Dr.  Johnson  is  still,  and  will  prob- 
ably ever  remain,  the  best.  The  life  indeed, 


POPE.  65 

like  the  rest  of  the  Lives  of  the  Poets,  is  a 
lazy  performance.  It  is  not  the  strenuous 
work  of  a  young  author  eager  for  fame. 
When  Johnson  sat  down,  at  the  instance 
of  the  London  booksellers,  to  write  the 
lives  of  those  poets  whose  works  his  em- 
ployers thought  it  well  to  publish,  he  had 
long  been  an  author  at  grass,  and  had  no 
mind  whatever  again  to  wear  the  collar. 
He  had  great  reading  and  an  amazing 
memory,  and  those  were  at  the  service  of 
the  trade.  The  facts  he  knew,  or  which 
were  brought  to  his  door,  he  recorded,  but 
research  was  not  in  his  way.  Was  he  not 
already  endowed  —  with  a  pension,  which, 
with  his  customary  indifference  to  attack, 
he  wished  were  twice  as  large,  in  order 
that  his  enemies  might  make  twice  as 
much  fuss  over  it  ?  None  the  less  —  nay, 
perhaps  all  the  more  —  for  being  written 
with  so  little  effort,  the  Lives  of  the  Poets 
are  delightful  reading,  and  Pope's  is  one 
of  the  very  best  of  them.*  None  knew  the 

*  Not  Horace  Walpole's  opinion.  '  Sir  Joshua  Rey- 
nolds has  lent  me  Dr.  Johnson's  Life  of  Pope,  which  Sir 
Joshua  holds  to  be  a  chef  (Taeuvre.  It  is  a  most  trumpery 
performance,  and  stuffed  with  all  his  crabbed  phrases 


66  POPE. 

infirmities  of  ordinary  human  nature  better 
than  Johnson.  They  neither  angered  him 
nor  amused  him  ;  he  neither  storms,  sneers, 
nor  chuckles,  as  he  records  man's  vanity, 
insincerity,  jealousy,  and  pretence.  It  is 
with  a  placid  pen  he  pricks  the  bubble 
fame,  dishonours  the  overdrawn  sentiment, 
burlesques  the  sham  philosophy  of  life ; 
but  for  generosity,  friendliness,  affection, 
he  is  always  on  the  watch,  whilst  talent 
and  achievement  never  fail  to  win  his  ad- 
miration ;  he  being  ever  eager  to  repay, 
as  best  he  could,  the  debt  of  gratitude 
surely  due  to  those  who  have  taken  pains 
to  please,  and  who  have  left  behind  them 
in  a  world,  which  rarely  treated  them 
kindly,  works  fitted  to  stir  youth  to  emula- 
tion, or  solace  the  disappointments  of  age. 
And  over  all  man's  manifold  infirmities, 
he  throws  benignantly  the  mantle  of  his 
stately  style.  Pope's  domestic  virtues  were 
not  likely  to  miss  Johnson's  approbation. 
Of  them  he  writes  :  — 

'  The  filial  piety  of  Pope  was  in  the  high- 
est degree  amiable  and  exemplary.  His 
parents  had  the  happiness  of  living  till  he 

and  vulgarisms,  and  much  trash  as  anecdotes.'  —  Letters, 
vol.  viii.,  p.  26. 


POPE.  %  67 

was  at  the  summit  of  poetical  reputation 
—  till  he  was  at  ease  in  his  fortune,  and 
without  a  rival  in  his  fame,  and  found  no 
diminution  of  his  respect  or  tenderness. 
Whatever  was  his  pride,  to  them  he  was 
obedient ;  and  whatever  was  his  irritability, 
to  them  he  was  gentle.  Life  has,  amongst 
its  soothing  and  quiet  comforts,  few  things 
better  to  give  than  such  a  son.' 

To  attempt  to  state  in  other  words  a 
paragraph  like  this  would  be  indelicate,  as 
bad  as  defacing  a  tombstone,  or  rewriting 
a  collect. 

Pope  has  had  many  editors,  but  the  last 
edition  will  probably  long  hold  the  field.  It 
is  more  than  sixty  years  since  the  original 
John  Murray,  of  Albemarle  Street,  deter- 
mined, with  the  approval  of  his  most  dis- 
tinguished client  Lord  Byron,  to  bring  out 
a  library  edition  of  Pope.  The  task  was 
first  entrusted  to  Croker,  the  man  whom 
Lord  Macaulay  hated  more  than  he  did 
cold  boiled  veal,  and  whose  edition,  had  it 
seen  the  light  in  the  great  historian's  life- 
time, would  have  been,  whatever  its  merits, 
well  basted  in  the  Edinburgh  Review.  But 
Croker  seems  to  have  made  no  real  pro- 


68  „  POPE. 

gress ;  for  though  occasionally  advertised 
amongst  Mr.  Murray's  list  of  forthcoming 
works,  the  first  volume  did  not  make  its 
appearance  until  1871,  fourteen  years  after 
Croker's  death.  The  new  editor  was  the 
Rev.  Whitwell  Elwin,  a  clergyman,  with 
many  qualifications  for  the  task,  —  patient, 
sensible,  not  too  fluent,  but  an  intense 
hater  of  Pope.  'To  be  wroth  with  one 
you  love,'  sings  Coleridge,  '  doth  work  like 
madness  in  the  brain  ; '  and  to  edit  in  nu- 
merous volumes  the  works  of  a  man  you 
cordially  dislike  and  always  mistrust  has 
something  of  the  same  effect,  whilst  it  is 
certainly  hard  measure  on  the  poor  fellow 
edited.  His  lot  —  if  I  may  venture  upon  a 
homely  comparison  founded  upon  a  lively 
reminiscence  of  childhood  —  resembles  that 
of  an  unfortunate  infant  being  dressed  by 
an  angry  nurse,  in  whose  malicious  hands 
the  simplest  operations  of  the  toilet,  to  say 
nothing  of  the  severer  processes  of  the  tub, 
can  easily  be  made  the  vehicles  of  no  mean 
torture.  Good  cause  can  be  shown  for 
hating  Pope  if  you  are  so  minded,  but  it  is 
something  of  a  shame  to  hate  him  and  edit 
him  too.  The  Rev.  Mr.  Elwin  unravels 


POPE.  69 

the  web  of  Pope's  follies  with  too  rough  a 
hand  for  my  liking ;  and  he  was,  besides, 
far  too  apt  to  believe  his  poet  in  the  wrong 
simply  because  somebody  has  said  he  was. 
For  example,  he  reprints  without  comment 
De  Quincey's  absurd  strictures  on  the  cele- 
brated lines  — 

'  Who  but  must  laugh  if  such  a  man  there  be ; 
Who  would  not  weep  if  Atticus  were  he ! ' 

De  Quincey  found  these  lines  unintelligi- 
ble, and  pulls  them  about  in  all  directions 
but  the  right  one.  The  ordinary  reader 
never  felt  any  difficulty.  However,  Mr. 
Elwin  kept  it  up  till  old  age  overtook 
him,  and  now  Mr.  Courthope  reigns  in 
his  stead.  Mr.  Courthope,  it  is  easy  to 
see,  would  have  told  a  very  different  tale 
had  he  been  in  command  from  the  first, 
for  he  keeps  sticking  in  a  good  word  for 
the  crafty  little  poet  whenever  he  decently 
can.  And  this  is  how  it  should  be.  Mr. 
Courthope's  Life,  which  will  be  the  con- 
cluding volume  of  Mr.  Murray's  edition, 
is  certain  to  be  a  fascinating  book. 

It  is  Pope's  behaviour  about  his  letters 
that  is  now  found  peculiarly  repellent. 
Acts  of  diseased  egotism  sometimes  ex- 


7O  POPE. 

cite  an  indignation  which  injurious  crimes 
fail  to  arouse. 

The  whole  story  is  too  long  to  be  told, 
and  is  by  this  time  tolerably  familiar. 
Here,  however,  is  part  of  it.  In  early 
life  Pope  began  writing  letters,  bits  of 
pompous  insincerity,  as  indeed  the  letters 
of  clever  boys  generally  are,  to  men  old 
enough  to  be  his  grandparents,  who  had 
been  struck  by  his  precocity  and  antici- 
pated his  fame  ;  and  being  always  master 
.of  his  own  time,  and  passionately  fond  of 
composition,  he  kept  up  the  habit  so 
formed,  and  wrote  his  letters  as  one  might 
fancy  the  celebrated  Blair  composing  his 
sermons,  with  much  solemnity,  very  slowly, 
and  without  emotion.  A  packet  of  these 
addressed  to  a  gentleman  owning  the  once 
I  proud  name  of  Cromwell,  and  who  was  cer- 
I  tainly  '  guiltless  of  his  country's  blood,' - 
for  all  that  is  now  known  of  him  is  that  he 
used  to  go  hunting  in  a  tie-wig,  that  is,  a 
full-bottomed  wig,  tied  up  at  the  ends,  — 
had  been  given  by  that  gentlemen  to  a 
lady  with  whom  he  had  relations,  who 
being,  as  will  sometimes  happen,  a  little 
pressed  for  money,  sold  them  for  ten  gui- 


POPE.  71 

neas  to  Edmund  Curll,  a  bold  pirate  of  a 
bookseller  and  publisher,  upon  whose  head 
every  kind  of  abuse  has  been  heaped,  not 
only  by  the  authors  whom  he  actually  pil- 
laged, but  by  succeeding  generations  of 
penmen  who  never  took  his  wages,  but 
none  the  less  revile  his  name.  He  was 
a  wily  ruffian.  In  the  year  1727  he  was 
condemned  by  His  Majesty's  judges  to 
stand  in  the  pillory  at  Charing  Cross  for 
publishing  a  libel,  and  thither  doubtless, 
at  the  appointed  hour,  many  poor  authors 
flocked,  with  their  pockets  full  of  the  bad 
eggs  that  should  have  made  their  brealc- 
fasts,  eager  to  wreak  vengeance  upon  their 
employer ;  but  a  printer  in  the  pillory  has 
advantages  over  other  traders,  and  Curll 
had  caused  handbills  to  be  struck  off  and 
distributed  amongst  the  crowd,  stating, 
with  his  usual  effrontery,  that  he  was  put 
in  the  pillory  for  vindicating  the  blessed 
memory  of  Her  late  Majesty  Queen  Anne. 
This  either  touched  or  tickled  the  mob  — 
it  does  not  matter  which  —  who  protected 
Curll  whilst  he  stood  on  high  from  further 
outrage,  and  when  his  penance  was  over 
bore  him  on  their  shoulders  to  an  adja- 


72  POPE. 

cent  tavern,  where  (it  is  alleged)  he  got 
right  royally  drunk.*  Ten  years  earlier, 
those  pleasant  youths,  the  Westminster 
scholars,  had  got  hold  of  him,  tossed  him 
in  a  blanket,  and  beat  him.  This  was  the 
man  who  bought  Pope's  letters  to  Crom- 
well for  ten  guineas,  and  published  them. 
Pope,  oddly  enough,  though  very  angry, 
does  not  seem  on  this  occasion  to  have 
moved  the  Court  of  Chancery,  as  he  sub- 
sequently did  against  the  same  publisher, 
for  an  injunction  to  restrain  the  vending 
of  the  volume.  Indeed,  until  his  suit  in 
1741,  when  he  obtained  an  injunction 
against  Curll,  restraining  the  sale  of  a 
volume  containing  some  of  his  letters  to 
Swift,  the  right  of  the  writer  of  a  letter 
to  forbid  its  publication  had  never  been 
established,  and  the  view  that  a  letter  was 
a  gift  to  the  receiver  had  received  some 
countenance.  But  Pope  had  so  much  of 
the  true  temper  of  a  litigant,  and  so  loved 
a  nice  point,  that  he  might  have  been  ex- 
pected to  raise  the  question  on  the  first 
opportunity.  He,  however,  did  not  do  so, 
and  the  volume  had  a  considerable  sale,  — 

*  Howell's  State  Trials,  vol.  xvii.,  p.  159. 


POPE.  73 

a  fact  not  likely  to  be  lost  sight  of  by 
so  keen  an  author  as  Pope,  to  whom  the 
thought  occurred,  'Could  I  only  recover 
all  my  letters,  and  get  them  published, 
I  should  be  as  famous  in  prose  as  I  am 
in  rhyme.'  His  communications  with  his 
friends  now  begin  to  be  full  of  the  mis- 
creant Curll,  against  whose  machinations 
and  guineas  no  letters  were  proof.  Have 
them  Curll  would,  and  publish  them  he 
would,  to  the  sore  injury  of  the  writer's 
feelings.  The  only  way  to  avoid  this  out- 
rage upon  the  privacy  of  true  friendship 
was  for  all  the  letters  to  be  returned  to 
the  writer,  who  had  arranged  for  them  to 
be  received  by  a  great  nobleman,  against 
whose  strong  boxes  Curll  might  rage  and 
surge  in  vain.  Pope's  friends  did  not  at 
first  quite  catch  his  drift.  '  You  need  give 
yourself  no  trouble,'  wrote  Swift,  though 
at  a  later  date  than  the  transaction  I  am 
now  describing  ;  '  everyone  of  your  letters 
shall  be  burnt.'  But  that  was  not  what 
Pope  wanted.  The  first  letters  he  recov- 
ered were  chiefly  those  he  had  written  to 
Mr.  Caryll,  a  Roman  Catholic  gentleman 
of  character.  Mr.  Caryll  parted  with  his 


74  POPE. 

letters  with  some  reluctance,  and  even  sus- 
picion, and  was  at  the  extraordinary  pains 
of  causing  them  all  to  be  transcribed  ;  in 
a  word,  he  kept  copies,  and  said  nothing 
about  it.  Now  it  is  that  Pope  set  about  as 
paltry  a  job  as  ever  engaged  the  attention 
of  a  man  of  genius.  He  proceeded  to  man- 
ufacture a  sham  correspondence  ;  he  gar- 
bled and  falsified  to  his  heart's  content. 
He  took  a  bit  of  one  letter  and  tagged  it 
on  to  a  bit  of  another  letter,  and  out  of 
these  two  foreign  parts  made  up  an  imagi- 
nary letter,  never  really  written  to  any- 
body, and  which  he  addressed  to  Mr.  Ad- 
dison,  who  was  dead,  or  to  whom  else  he 
chose.  He  did  this  without  much  regard 
to  anything  except  the  manufacture  of 
something  which  he  thought  would  read 
well,  and  exhibit  himself  in  an  amiable 
light  and  in  a  sweet,  unpremeditated 
strain.  This  done,  the  little  poet  de- 
stroyed the  originals,  and  deposited  one 
copy,  as  he  said  he  was  going  to  do,  in 
the  library  of  the  Earl  of  Oxford,  whose 
permission  so  to  do  he  sought  with  much 
solemnity,  the  nobleman  replying  with 
curtness  that  any  parcel  Mr.  Pope  chose 


POPE.  75 

to  send  to  his  butler  should  be  taken  care 
of.  So  far  good.  The  next  thing  was  to 
get  the  letters  published  from  the  copy 
he  had  retained  for  his  own  use.  His 
vanity  and  love  of  intrigue  forbade  him 
doing  so  directly,  and  he  bethought  him- 
self of  his  enemy,  the  piratical  Curll,  with 
whom,  there  can  now  be  no  reasonable 
doubt,  he  opened  a  sham  correspondence 
under  the  initials  "P.  T."  "P.  T."  was 
made  to  state  that  he  had  letters  in  his 
possession  of  Mr.  Pope's,  who  had  done 
him  some  disservice,  which  letters  he  was 
willing  to  let  Curll  publish.  Curll  was  as 
wily  as  Pope,  to  whom  he  at  once  wrote, 
and  told  him  what  "  P.  T."  was  offering 
him.  Pope  replied  by  an  advertisement 
in  a  newspaper,  denying  the  existence  of 
any  such  letters.  "P.  T.,"  however,  still 
kept  it  up,  and  a  mysterious  person  was 
introduced  as  a  go-between,  wearing  a  cler- 
gyman's wig  and  lawyer's  bands.  Curll 
at  last  advertised  as  forthcoming  an  edi- 
tion of  Mr.  Pope's  letters  to,  and,  as  the 
advertisement  certainly  ran,  from,  divers 
noblemen  and  gentlemen.  Pope  affected 
the  utmost  fury,  and  set  the  House  of 


76  POPE. 

Lords  upon  the  printer  for  threatening  to 
publish  peers'  letters  without  their  leave. 
Curll,  however,  had  a  tongue  in  his  head, 
and  easily  satisfied  a  committee  of  their 
Lordships'  House  that  this  was  a  mistake, 
and  that  no  noblemen's  letters  were  in- 
cluded in  the  intended  publication,  the 
unbound  sheets  of  which  he  produced. 
The  House  of  Lords,  somewhat  mystified 
and  disgusted,  gave  the  matter  up,  and 
the  letters  came  out  in  1735.  Pope  raved, 
but  the  judicious  even  then  opined  that 
he  protested  somewhat  too  much.  He 
promptly  got  a  bookseller  to  pirate  Curll's 
edition  —  a  proceeding  on  his  part  which 
struck  Curll  as  the  unkindest  cut  of  all, 
and  flagrantly  dishonest.  He  took  pro- 
ceedings against  Pope's  publisher,  but 
what  came  of  the  litigation  I  cannot  say. 

The  Caryll  copy  of  the  correspondence 
as  it  actually  existed,  after  long  remaining 
in  manuscript,  has  been  published,  and  we 
have  now  the  real  letters  and  the  sham 
letters  side  by  side.  The  effect  is  gro- 
tesquely disgusting.  For  example,  on  Sep- 
tember 2Oth,  1713,  Pope  undoubtedly  wrote 
to  Caryll  as  follows  :  — 


POPE.  77 

'  I  have  been  just  taking  a  walk  in  St. 
James's  Park,  full  of  the  reflections  of  the 
transitory  nature  of  all  human  delights, 
and  giving  my  thoughts  a  loose  into  the 
contemplation  of  those  sensations  of  satis- 
faction which  probably  we  may  taste  in  the 
more  exalted  company  of  separate  spirits, 
when  we  range  the  starry  walks  above  and 
gaze  on  the  world  at  a  vast  distance,  as 
now  we  do  on  those.' 

Poor  stuff  enough,  one  would  have 
thought.  On  re-reading  this  letter  Pope 
was  so  pleased  with  his  moonshine  that  he 
transferred  the  whole  passage  to  an  imag- 
inary letter,  to  which  he  gave  the,  of  course 
fictitious,  date  of  February  roth,  1715,  and 
addressed  to  Mr.  Blount ;  so  that,  as  the 
correspondence  now  stands,  you  first  get 
theCaryll  letter  of  1713,  'I  have  been  just 
taking  a  solitary  walk  by  moonshine,'  and 
so  on  about  the  starry  walks ;  and  then 
you  get  the  Blount  letter  of  1715,  'I  have 
been  just  taking  a  solitary  walk  by  moon- 
shine ; '  and  go  on  to  find  Pope  refilled 
with  his  reflections  as  before.  Mr.  Elwin 
does  not,  you  may  be  sure,  fail  to  note  how 
unlucky  Pope  was  in  his  second  date, 


78  POPE. 

February  loth,  1715  ;  that  being  a  famous 
year,  when  the  Thames  was  frozen  over, 
and  as  the  thaw  set  in  on  the  Qth,  and  the 
streets  were  impassable  even  for  strong 
men,  a  tender  morsel  like  Pope  was  hardly 
likely  to  be  out  after  dark.  But,  of  course, 
when  Pope  concocted  the  Blount  letter  in 
1735,  and  gave  it  any  date  he  chose,  he 
could  not  be  expected  to  carry  in  his  head 
what  sort  of  night  it  was  on  any  particular 
day  in  February  twenty-two  years  before. 
It  is  ever  dangerous  to  tamper  with  writ- 
ten documents  which  have  been  out  of 
your  sole  and  exclusive  possession  even  for 
a  few  minutes. 

A  letter  Pope  published  as  having  been 
addressed  to  Addison  is  made  up  of  frag- 
ments of  three  letters  actually  written  to 
Caryll.  Another  imaginary  letter  to  Ad- 
dison contains  the  following  not  inapt  pas- 
sage from  a  letter  to  Caryll :  — 

4  Good  God !  what  an  incongruous  ani- 
mal is  man  !  how  unsettled  in  his  best  part, 
his  soul,  and  how  changing  and  variable  in 
his  frame  of  body.  What  is  man  altogether 
but  one  mighty  inconsistency  ? ' 

What,    indeed  !      The    method    subse- 


POPE.  79 

quently  employed  by  Pope  to  recover  his 
letters  from  Swift,  and  to  get  them  pub- 
lished in  such  a  way  as  to  create  the  im- 
pression that  Pope  himself  had  no  hand  in 
it,  cannot  be  here  narrated.  It  is  a  story 
no  one  can  take  pleasure  in.  '  Of  such  an 
organised  hypocrisy  as  this  correspondence 
it  is  no  man's  duty  to  speak  seriously. 
Here  and  there  an  amusing  letter  occurs, 
but  as  a  whole  it  is  neither  interesting, 
elevating,  nor  amusing.  When  in  1741 
Curll  moved  to  dissolve  the  injunction 
Pope  had  obtained  in  connection  with  the 
Swift  correspondence,  his  counsel  argued 
that  letters  on  familiar  subjects  and  con- 
taining, inquiries  after  the  health  of  friends 
were  not  learned  works,  and  consequently 
were  not  within  the  copyright  statute  of 
Queen  Anne,  which  was  entitled,  'An  act 
for  the  Encouragement  of  Learning ' ; 
but  Lord  Hardwicke,  with  his  accustomed 
good  sense,  would"  have  none  of  this  ob- 
jection, and  observed  (and  these  remarks, 
being  necessary  for  the  judgment,  are  not 
mere  obiter  dicta,  but  conclusive)  :  — 

'  It  is  certain  that  no  works  have  done 
more  service  to  mankind  than  those  which 


8o  POPE. 

have  appeared  in  this  shape  upon  familiar 
subjects,  and  which,  perhaps,  were  never 
intended  to  be  published  ;  and  it  is  this 
which  makes  them  so  valuable,  for  I  must 
confess,  for  my  own  part,  that  letters  which 
are  very  elaborately  written,  and  originally 
intended  for  the  press,  are  generally  the 
most  insignificant,  and  very  little  worth 
any  person's  reading'  (2  Atkyns,  p.  357). 

I  am  encouraged  by  this  authority  to  ex- 
press the  unorthodox  opinion  that  Pope's 
letters,  with  scarcely  half-a-dozen  excep- 
tions, and  only  one  notable  exception,  are 
very  little  worth  any  person's  reading. 

Pope's  epistolary  pranks  have,  perhaps, 
done  him  some  injustice.  It  has  always 
been  the  fashion  to  admire  the  letter  which, 
first  appearing  in  1737,  in  Pope's  corre- 
spondence, and  there  attributed  to  Gay, 
describes  the  death  by  lightning  of  the 
rustic  lovers  John  Hewet  and  Sarah  Drew. 
An  identical  description  occurring  in  a  let- 
ter written  by  Pope  to  Lady  Mary  Wortley 
Montague,  and  subsequently  published  by 
Warton  from  the  original,  naturally  caused 
the  poet  to  be  accused  of  pilfering  another 
man's  letter,  and  sending  it  off  as  his  own. 


POPE.  8 1 

Mr.  Thackeray  so  puts  it  in  his  world- 
famous  Lectures,  and  few  literary  anec- 
dotes are  wider  known  ;  but  the  better 
opinion  undoubtedly  is  that  the  letter  was 
Pope's  from  the  beginning,  and  attributed 
by  him  to  Gay  because  he  did  not  want  to 
have  it  appear  that  on  the  date  in  question 
he  was  corresponding  with  Lady  Mary. 
After  all,  there  is  a  great  deal  to  be  said  in 
favour  of  honesty. 

When  we  turn  from  the  man  to  .the  poet 
we  have  at  once  to  change  our  key.  A 
cleverer  fellow  than  Pope  never  commenced 
author.  He  was  in  his  own  mundane  way 
as  determined  to  be  a  poet,  and  the  best 
going,  as  John  Milton  himself.  He  took 
pains  to  be  splendid  —  he  polished  and 
pruned.  His  first  draft  never  reached  the 
printer  —  though  he  sometimes  said  it  did. 
This  ought,  I  think,  to  endear  him  to  us  in 
these  hasty  days,  when  authors  high  and 
low  think  nothing  of  emptying  the  slops  of 
their  minds  over  their  readers,  without  so 
much  as  a  cry  of  '  Heads  below.' 

Pope's  translation  of  the  7/zWwas  his 
first  great  undertaking,  and  he  worked  at 
it  like  a  Trojan.  It  was  published  by  sub- 


82  POPE. 

scription  for  two  guineas  ;  that  is,  the  first 
part  was.  His  friends  were  set  to  work  to 
collect  subscribers.  Caryll  alone  got  thirty- 
eight.  Pope  fully  entered  into  this.  He 
was  always  alive  to  the  value  of  his  wares, 
and  despised  the  foppery  of  those  of  his 
literary  friends  who  would  not  make  money 
o^it  of  their  books,  but  would  do  so  out  of 
their  country.  He  writes  to  Caryll  :  — 

'  But  I  am  in  good  earnest  of  late,  too 
much  a  man  of  business  to  mind  metaphors 
and  similes.  I  find  subscribing  much  su- 
perior to  writing,  and  there  is  a  sort  of 
little  epigram  I  more  especially  delight  in, 
after  the  manner  of  rondeaus,  which  begin 
and  end  all  in  the  same  words,  namely  — 
"  Received  "  and  "A.  Pope."  These  epi- 
grams end  smartly,  and  each  of  them  are 
tagged  with  two  guineas.  Of  these,  as  I 
have  learnt,  you  have  composed  several 
ready  for  me  to  set  my  name  to.' 

This  is  certainly  much  better  than  that 
trumpery  walk  in  the  moonshine.  Pope  had 
not  at  this  time  joined  the  Tories,  and 
both  parties  subscribed.  He  cleared  over 
^5,000  by  the  Iliad.  Over  the  Odyssey  he 
slackened,  and  employed  two  inferior  wits 


POPE.  83 

to  do  half  the  books  ;  but  even  after  paying 
his  journeymen  he  made  nearly  ,£4,000 
over  the  Odyssey.  Well  might  he  write  in 
later  life  — 

'  Since,  thanks  to  Homer,  I  do  live  and  thrive.' 

Pope  was  amongst  the  first  of  prosperous 
authors,  and  heads  the  clan  of  cunning 
fellows  who  have  turned  their  lyrical  cry 
into  consols,  and  their  odes  into  acres. 

Of  the  merits  of  this  great  work  it  is  not 
necessary  to  speak  at  length.  Mr.  Ed- 
mund Yates  tells  a  pleasant  story  of  how 
one  day  when  an  old  school  Homer  lay  on 
his  table,  Shirley  Brooks  sauntered  in,  and 
taking  the  book  up  laid  it  down  again, 
dryly  observing,  'Ah  !  I  see  you  have 
Homers  Iliad!  Well,  I  believe,  it  is  the 
best.'  And  so  it  is.  Homer's  Iliad  is  the 
best,  and  Pope's  Homer  s  Iliad  is  the  sec- 
ond best.  Whose  is  the  third  best  is  con- 
troversy. 

Pope  knew  next  to  no  Greek,  but  then 
he  did  not  work  upon  the  Greek  text.  He 
had  Chapman's  translation  ever  at  his  el- 
bow, also  the  version  of  John  Ogilby,  which 
had  appeared  in  1660  —  a  splendid  folio, 


84  POPE. 

with  illustrations  by  the  celebrated  Hollar. 
Dryden  had  not  got  farther  than  the  first 
book  of  the  Iliad,  and  a  fragment  of  the 
sixth  book.  A  faithful  rendering  of  the 
exact  sense  of  Homer  is  not,  of  course,  to 
be  looked  for.  In  the  first  book  Pope  de- 
scribes the  captive  maid  Briseis  as  looking 
back.  In  Homer  she  does  not  look  back, 
but  in  Dryden  she  does  ;  and  Pope  fol- 
lowed Dryden,  and  did  not  look,  at  all 
events,  any  farther  back. 

But  what  really  is  odd  is  that  in  Cow- 
per's  translation  Briseis  looks  back  too. 
Now,  Cowper  had  been  to  a  public  school, 
and  consequently  knew  Greek,  and  made 
it  his  special  boast  that,  though  dull,  he 
was  faithful.  It  is  easy  to  make  fun  of 
Pope's  version,  but  true  scholars  have  sel- 
dom done  so.  Listen  to  Professor  Coning- 
ton  *  :  — 

'It  has  been,  and  I  hope  still  is,  the  de- 
light of  every  intelligent  schoolboy.  They 
read  of  kings,  and  heroes,  and  mighty 
deeds  in  language  which,  in  its  calm  majes- 
tic flow,  unhasting,  unresting,  carries  them 
on  as  irresistibly  as  Homer's  own  could  do 

*  In  Oxford  Essays  for  1858. 


POPE.  85 

were  they  born  readers  of  Greek,  and  their 
minds  are  filled  with  a  conception  of  the 
heroic  age,  not  indeed  strictly  true,  but 
almost  as  near  the  truth  as  that  which,  was 
entertained  by  Virgil  himself.' 

Mr.  D.  G.  Rossetti,  himself  both  an  ad- 
mirable translator  and  a  distinguished  poet, 
has  in  effect  laid  down  the  first  law  of 
rhythmical  translation  thus  :  'Thou  shalt 
not  turn  a  good  poem  into  a  bad  one.' 
Pope  kept  this  law. 

Pope  was  a  great  adept  at  working  upon 
other  men's  stuff.  There  is  hardly  any- 
thing in  which  men  differ  more  enormously 
than  in  the  degree  in  which  they  possess 
this  faculty  of  utilisation.  Pope's  Essay  on 
Criticism,  which  brought  him  great  fame, 
and  was  thought  a  miracle  of  wit,  was  the 
result  of  much  hasty  reading,  undertaken 
with  the  intention  of  appropriation.  Apart 
from  the  limcz  labor,  which  was  enormous, 
and  was  never  grudged  by  Pope,  there  was 
not  an  hour's  really  hard  work  in  it.  Dry- 
den  had  begun  the  work  of  English  criti- 
cism with  his  Essay  on  Dramatic  Poesy, 
and  other  well-known  pieces.  He  had  also 
translated  Boileau's  Art  of  Poetry.  Then 


86  POPE. 

there  were  the  works  of  those  noble  lords, 
Lord  Sheffield,  Lord  Roscommon,  Lord 
Granville,  and  the  Duke  of  Buckingham. 
Pope,  who  loved  a  brief,  read  all  these 
books  greedily,  and  with  an  amazing  quick 
eye  for  points.  His  orderly  brain  and  bril- 
liant wit  re-arranged  and  rendered  resplen- 
dent the  ill-placed  and  ill-set  thoughts  of 
other  men. 

The  same  thing  is  noticeable  in  the  most 
laboured  production  of  his  later  life,  the 
celebrated  Essay  on  Man.  For  this  he  was 
coached  by  Lord  Bolingbroke. 

Pope  was  accustomed  to  talk  with  much 
solemnity  of  his  ethical  system,  of  which 
the  Essay  on  Man  is  but  a  fragment,  but 
we  need  not  trouble  ourselves  about  it. 
Dr.  Johnson  said  about  Clarissa  Harlowe 
that  the  man  who  read  it  for  the  story 
might  hang  himself ;  so  we  may  say  about 
the  poetry  of  Pope  :  the  man  who  reads  it 
for  its  critical  or  ethical  philosophy  may 
hang  himself.  We  read  Pope  for  pleasure, 
but  a  bit  of  his  philosophy  may  be  given  — 

1  Presumptuous  man  !  the  reason  wouldst  thou  find. 
Why  formed  so  weak,  so  little,  and  so  blind  ? 
First,  if  thou  canst,  the  harder  reason  guess 


POPE.  87 

Why  formed  no  weaker,  blinder,  and  no  less  ? 
Ask  of  thy  mother  Earth  why  oaks  are  made 
Taller  and  stronger  than  the  weeds  they  shade  ! 
Or  ask  of  yonder  argent  fields  above 
Why  Jove's  satellites  are  less  than  Jove  ! ' 

To  this  latter  interrogatory  presumptuous 
science,  speaking  through  the  mouth  of 
Voltaire,  was  ready  with  an  answer.  If 
Jupiter  were  less  than  his  satellites  they 
would  n't  go  round  him.  Pope  can  make 
no  claim  to  be  a  philosopher,  and  had  he 
been  one,  Verse  would  have  been  a  most 
improper  vehicle  to  convey  his  specula- 
tions. No  one  willingly  rights  in  hand- 
cuffs or  wrestles  to  music.  For  a  man 
with  novel  truths  to  promulgate,  or  grave 
moral  laws  to  expound,  to  postpone  doing 
so  until  he  had  hitched  them  into  rhyme 
would  be  to  insult  his  mission.  Pope's  gifts 
were  his  wit,  his  swift-working  mind,  added 
to  all  the  cunning  of  the  craft  and  mystery 
of  composition.  He  could  say  things  bet- 
ter than  other  men,  and  hence  it  comes 
that,  be  he  a  great  poet  or  a  small  one,  he 
is  a  great  writer,  an  English  classic.  What 
is  it  that  constitutes  a  great  writer?  A 
bold  question,  certainly,  but  whenever  any- 
one asks  himself  a  question  in  public  you 


88  POPE. 

may  be  certain  he  has  provided  himself 
with  an  answer.  I  find  mine  in  the  writ- 
ings of  a  distinguished  neighbour  of  yours, 
himself,  though  living,  an  English  classic 
—  Cardinal  Newman.  He  says  :  *  — 

*  I  do  not  claim  for  a  great  author,  as 
such,  any  great  depth  of  thought,  or 
breadth  of  view,  or  philosophy,  or  sagac- 
ity, or  knowledge  of  human  nature,  or  ex- 
perience of  human  life  —  though  these 
additional  gifts  he  may  have,  and  the  more 
he  has  of  them  the  greater  he  is,  —  but  I 
ascribe  to  him,  as  his  characteristic  gift,  in 
a  large  sense,  the  faculty  of  expression. 
He  is  master  of  the  two-fold  X6yo<s,  the 
thought  and  the  word,  distinct  but  insepa- 
rable from  each  other.  ...  He  always  has 
the  right  word  for  the  right  idea,  and  never 
a  word  too  much.  If  he  is  brief  it  is  be- 
cause few  words  suffice  ;  if  he  is  lavish  of 
them,  still  each  word  has  its  mark,  and 
aids,  not  embarrasses,  the  vigorous  march 
of  his  elocution.  He  expresses  what  all 
feel,  but  all  cannot  say,  and  his  'sayings 
pass  into  proverbs  amongst  his  people,  and 

*  Lectures  and  Essays  on  University  Subjects :  Lecture 
on  Literature. 


POPE.  89 

his  phrases  become  household  words  and 
idioms  of  their  daily  speech,  which  is  tesse- 
lated  with  the  rich  fragments  of  his  lan- 
guage, as  we  see  in  foreign  lands  the 
marbles  of  Roman  grandeur  worked  into 
the  walls  and  pavements  of  modern  pal- 
aces.' Pope  satisfies  this  definition.  He 
has  been  dead  one  hundred  and  forty-two 
years ;  yet,  next  to  Shakspeare,  who  has 
been  dead  two  hundred  and  seventy  years, 
and  who  was  nearer  to  Pope  than  Pope  is 
to  us,  he  is  the  most  quoted  of  English 
poets,  the  one  who  has  most  enriched  our 
common  speech.  Horace  used,  but  has 
long  ceased  to  be,  the  poet  of  Parliament  ; 
for  the  late  Prime  Minister,  who,  more 
than  any  other,  has  kept  alive  in  Parlia- 
ment the  scholarly  traditions  of  the  past, 
has  never  been  very  Horatian,  preferring, 
whenever  the  dignity  of  the  occasion 
seemed  to  demand  Latin,  the  long  roll  of 
the  hexameter,  something  out  of  Virgil  or 
Lucretius.  The  new  generation  of  hon- 
ourable members  might  not  unprofitably 
turn  their  attention  to  Pope.  Think  how, 
at  all  events,  the  labour  members  would 
applaud,  not  with  a  '  sad  civility,'  but  with 


9O  POPE. 

downright  cheers,  a  quotation  they  actually 
understood. 

Pope  is  seen  at  his  best  in  his  satires 
and  epistles,  and  in  the  mock-heroic.  To 
say  that  the  Rape  of  the  Lock  is  the  best 
mock-heroic  poem  in  the  •  language  is  to 
say  nothing ;  to  say  that  it  is  the  best  in 
the  world  is  to  say  more  than  my  reading 
warrants ;  but  to  say  that  it  and  Paradise 
Regained  are  the  only  two  faultless  poems, 
of  any  length,  in  English  is  to  say  enough. 

The  satires  are  savage  —  perhaps  satires 
should'  be ;  but  Pope's  satires  are  some- 
times what  satires  should  never  be  —  shrill. 
Dr.  Johnson  is  more  to  my  mind  as  a  sheer 
satirist  than  Pope,  for  in  satire  character 
tells  more  than  in  any  other  form  of  verse. 
We  want  a  personality  behind  —  a  strong, 
gloomy,  brooding  personality ;  soured  and 
savage  if  you  will  —  nay,  as  soured  and 
savage  as  you  like,  but  spiteful  never. 

Pope  became  rather  by  the  backing  of 
his  friends  than  from  any  other  cause  a 
party  man.  Party  feeling  ran  high  during 
the  first  Georges,  and  embraced  things 
now  outside  its  ambit  —  the  theatre,  for 
example,  and  the  opera.  You  remember 


POPE.  91 

how  excited  politicians  got  over  Addison's 
Cato,  which,  as  the  work  of  a  Whig,  and 
appearing  at  a  critical  time,  was  thought 
to  be  full  of  a  wicked  wit  and  a  subtle  in- 
nuendo future  ages  have  failed  to  discover, 
amidst  its  obvious  dulness.  Pope,  who 
was  not  then  connected  with  either  party, 
wrote  the  prologue,  and  in  one  of  the  best 
letters  ever  written  to  nobody  tells  the 
story  of  the  first  night. 

'  The  numerous  and  violent  claps  of  the 
Whig  party,  on  the  one  side  the  theatre, 
were  echoed  back  by  the  Tories  on  the 
other,  while  the  author  sweated  behind  the 
scenes  with  concern  to  find  their  applause 
proceeded  more  from  the  hand  than  the 
head.  This  was  the  case  too  of  the  pro- 
logue-writer, who  was  clapped  into  a 
stanch  Whig,  sore  against  his  will,  at  al- 
most every  two  lines.  I  believe  that  you 
have  heard  that,  after  all  the  applause  of 
the  opposite  faction,  my  Lord  Bolingbroke 
sent  for  Booth,  who  played  Cato,  into  the 
box  between  one  of  the  acts,  and  presented 
him  with  fifty  guineas,  in  acknowledgment, 
as  he  expressed  it,  for  his  defending  the 
cause  of  liberty  so  well  against  a  perpetual 


92  POPE. 

dictator.  The  Whigs  are  unwilling  to  be 
distanced  this  way,  as  it  is  said,  and,  there- 
fore, design  a  present  to  the  said  Cato  very 
speedily.  In  the  meantime  they  are  getting 
ready  as  good  a  sentence  as  the  former  on 
their  side.  So,  betwixt  them,  it  is  proba- 
ble that  Cato,  as  Dr.  Garth  expressed  it, 
may  have  something  to  live  upon  after  he 
dies.' 

Later  on  music  was  dragged  into  the 
fray.  The  Court  was  all  for  Handel  and 
the  Germans  ;  the  Prince  of  Wales  and  the 
Tory  nobility  affected  the  Italian  opera. 
The  Whigs  went  to  the  Haymarket ;  the 
Tories  to  the  Opera  House  in  Lincoln's 
Inn  Field.  In  this  latter  strife  Pope  took 
no  part ;  for,  notwithstanding  his  Ode  on 
St.  Cecilia's  Day,  he  hated  music  with  an 
entire  sincerity.  He  also  affected  to  hate 
the  drama ;  but  some  have  thought  this  ac- 
counted for  by  the  fact  that,  early  in  his 
career,  he  was  damned  for  the  farce  of 
Three  Hours  After  Marriage,  which,  after 
the  fashion  of  our  own  days,  he  concocted 
with  another,  the  co-author  in  this  case  be- 
ing a  wit  of  no  less  calibre  than  Gay,  the 
author  of  The  Beggars'  Opera.  The  aston- 


POPE.  93 

ished  audience  bore  it  as  best  they  might 
till  the  last  act,  when  the  two  lovers,  hav- 
ing first  inserted  themselves  respectively 
into  the  skins  of  a  mummy  and  a  crocodile, 
talk  at  one  another  across  the  boards  ;  then 
they  rose  in  their  rage,  and  made  an  end 
of  that  farce.  Their  yells  were  doubtless 
still  in  Pope's  ears  when,  years  afterwards, 
he  wrote  the  fine  lines  — 

'  While  all  its  throats  the  gallery  extends, 
And  all  the  thunder  of  the  pit  ascends, 
Loud  as  the  wolves  on  Orca's  stormy  deep 
Howl  to  the  roarings  of  the  northern  deep.' 

Pope,  as  we  have  said,  became  a  parti- 
san, and  so  had  his  hands  full  of  ready-made 
quarrels  ;  but  his  period  was  certainly  one 
that  demanded  a  satirist.  Perhaps  most 
periods  do  ;  but  I  am  content  to  repeat,  his 
did.  Satire  like  Pope's  is  essentially  mo- 
dish, and  requires  a  restricted  range.  Were 
anyone  desirous  of  satirising  humanity  at 
large  I  should  advise  him  to  check  his 
noble  rage,  and,  at  all  events,  to  begin  with 
his  next-door  neighbour,  who  is  almost 
certain  to  resent  it,  which  humanity  will 
not  do.  This  was  Pope's  method.  It  was 
a  corrupt  set  amongst  whom  he  moved. 


94  POPE. 

The  gambling  in  the  South  Sea  stock  had 
been  prodigious,  and  high  and  low,  married 
and  single,  town  and  country,  Protestant 
and  Catholic,  Whig  and  Tory,  took  part  in 
it.  One  could  gamble  in  that  stock.  The 
mania  began  in  February  1720,  and  by  the 
end  of  May  the  price  of  ;£ioo  stock  was 
up  to  .^340.  In  July  and  August  it  was 
^950,  and  even  touched  ;£i,ooo.  In  the 
middle  of  September  it  was  down  to  ^590, 
and  before  the  end  of  the  year  it  had 
dropped  to  ^125.  Pope  himself  bought 
stock  when  it  stood  so  low  as  ^104,  but  he 
had  never  the  courage  to  sell,  and  con- 
sequently lost,  according  to  his  own  ac- 
count, half  his  worldly  possessions.  The 
Prime  Minister,  Sir  Robert  Walpole,  also 
bought  stock,  but  he  sold — as  did  his  Most 
Gracious  Majesty  the  King  —  at  ^1,000. 
The  age  was  also  a  scandalous,  ill-living 
age,  and  Pope,  who  was  a  most  confirmed 
gossip  and  tale-bearer,  picked  up  all  that 
was  going.  The  details  of  every  lawsuit 
of  a  personal  character  were  at  his  finger- 
ends.  Whoever  starved  a  sister,  or  forged 
a  will,  or  saved  his  candle-ends,  made  a 
fortune  dishonestly,  or  lost  one  disgrace- 


POPE.  95 

fully,  or  was  reported  to  do  so,  be  he  citizen 
or  courtier,  noble  duke  or  plump  alderman, 
Mr.  Pope  was  sure  to  know  all  about  it, 
and  as  likely  as  not  to  put  it  into  his  next 
satire.  Living,  as  the  poet  did,  within  easy 
distance  of  London,  he  always  turned  up 
in  a  crisis  as  regularly  as  a  porpoise  in  a 
storm,  so  at  least  writes  a  noble  friend. 
This  sort  of  thing  naturally  led  to  quarrels, 
and  the  shocking  incompleteness  of  this 
lecture  stands  demonstrated  by  the  fact 
that,  though  I  have  almost  done,  I  have  as 
yet  said  nothing  about  Pope's  quarrels, 
which  is  nearly  as  bad  as  writing  about 
St.  Paul  and  leaving  out  his  journeys. 
Pope's  quarrels  are  celebrated.  His  quar- 
rel with  Mr.  Addison,  culminating  in  the 
celebrated  description,  almost  every  line 
of  which  is  now  part  and  parcel'  of  the 
English  language  ;  his  quarrel  with  Lady 
Mary  Wortley  Montague,  whom  he  satir- 
ised in  the  most  brutal  lines  ever  written 
by  man  of  woman  ;  his  quarrel  with  Lord 
Hervey ;  his  quarrel  with  the  celebrated 
Sarah,  Duchess  of  Marlborough,  ought  not 
to  be  dismissed  so  lightly,  but  what  can  I 
do  ?  From  the  Duchess  of  Marlborough 


96      .  POPE. 

Pope  is  said  to  have  received  a  sum  of 
money,  sometimes  stated  at  ;£i,ooo  and 
sometimes  at  ,£3,000,  for  consenting  to 
suppress  his  description  of  her  as  Atossa, 
which,  none  the  less,  he  published.  I  do 
not  believe  the  story ;  money  passed  be- 
tween the  parties  and  went  to  Miss  Martha 
Blount,  but  it  must  have  been  for  some 
other  consideration.  Sarah  Jennings  was 
no  fool,  and  loved  money  far  too  well  to 
give  it  away  without  security,  and  how  pos- 
sibly could  she  hope  by  a  cash  payment  to 
erase  from  the  tablets  of  a  poet's  memory 
lines  dictated  by  his  hate,  or  bind  by  the 
law  of  honour  a  man  capable  of  extorting 
blackmail  ?  Then  Pope  quarrelled  most 
terribly  with  the  elder  Miss  Blount,  who, 
he  said,  used  to  beat  her  mother ;  then  he 
quarrelled  with  the  mother  because  she 
persisted  in  living  with  the  daughter  and 
pretending  to  be  fond  of  her.  As  for  his 
quarrels  with  the  whole  tribe  of  poor  au- 
thors, are  they  not  writ  large  in  the  four 
books  of  the  Dunciad?  Mr.  Swinburne  is 
indeed  able 'to  find  in  some,  at  all  events, 
of  these  quarrels  a  species  of  holy  war, 
waged,  as  he  says,  in  language  which  is,  at 


POPE.  97 

all  events,  strong,  '  against  all  the  banded 
bestialities  of  all  dunces  and  all  dastards, 
all  blackguardly  blockheads  and  all  block- 
headed  blackguards.' 

I  am  sorry  to  be  unable  to  allow  myself 
to  be  wound  up  in  Mr.  Swinburne's  bucket 
to  the  height  of  his  argument.  There  are 
two  kinds  of  quarrels,  the  noble  and  the 
ignoble.  When  John  Milton,  weary  and 
depressed  for  a  moment  in  the  battle  he 
was  fighting  in  the  cause  of  an  enlight- 
ened liberty  and  an  instructed  freedom, 
exclaims,  with  the  sad  prophet  Jeremy, 
'Woe  is  me,  my  mother,  that  thou  hast 
borne  me,  a  man  of  strife  and  contention,' 
we  feel  the  sublimity  of  the  quotation, 
which  would  not  be  quite  the  case  were 
the  words  uttered  by  an  Irishman  return- 
ing home  with  a  broken  head  from  Donny- 
brook  Fair.  The  Dunciad  was  quite  un- 
called for.  Even  supposing  that  we  admit 
that  Pope  was  not  the  agressor, 

'  The  noblest  answer  unto  such 
Is  kindly  silence  when  they  brawl.' 

But  it  is,  to  say  the  least  of  it,  doubtful 
whether  Pope  did  not  begin  brawling  first. 
Swift,  whose  misanthropy  was  genuine, 


98  POPE. 

and  who  begged  Pope  whenever  he  thought 
of  the  world  to  give  it  another  lash  on  his 
(the  Dean's)  account,  saw  clearly  the 
danger  of  Pope's  method,  and  wrote  to 
him  :  '  Take  care  the  bad  poets  do  not  out- 
wit you  as  they  have  done  the  good  ones  in 
every  age  ;  whom  they  have  provoked  to 
transmit  their  names  to  posterity.  Maevius 
is  as  well  known  as  Virgil,  and  Gildon  will 
be  as  well  known  as  you  if  his  name  gets 
into  your  verses  ;  and  as  for  the  difference 
between  good  and  bad  fame,  it  is  a  mere 
trifle.'  The  advice  was  far  too  good  to  be 
taken.  But  what  has  happened  ?  The 
petty  would-be  Popes  but  for  the  real  Pope 
would  have  been  entirely  forgotten.  As  it 
is,  only  their  names  survive  in  the  index  to 
the  Dunciad ;  their  indecencies  and  das- 
tardly blockheadisms  are  as  dead  as  Queen 
Anne  ;  and  if  the  historian  or  the  moralist 
seeks  an  illustration  of  the  coarseness  and 
brutality  of  their  style,  he  finds  it  only  too 
easily,  not  in  the  works  of  the  dead  dunces, 
but  in  the  pages  of  their  persecutor.  Pope 
had  none  of  the  grave  purpose  which 
makes  us,  at  all  events,  partially  sympa- 
thise with  Ben  Jonson  in  his  quarrels  with 


POPE,  99 

the  poetasters  of  his  day.  It  is  a  mere 
toss-up  whose  name  you  may  find  in  the 
Dunciad — a  miserable  scribbler's  or  a  re- 
splendent scholar's  ;  a  tasteless  critic's  or 
an  immortal  wit's.  A  satirist  who  places 
Richard  Bentley  and  Daniel  Defoe  amongst 
the  dunces  must  be  content  to  abate  his 
pretensions  to  be  regarded  as  a  social 
purge. 

Men  and  women,  we  can  well  believe, 
went  in  terror  of  little  Mr.  Pope.  Well 
they  might,  for  he  made  small  concealment 
of  their  names,  and  even  such  as  had  the 
luck  to  escape  obvious  recognition  have 
been  hoisted  into  infamy  by  the  untiring 
labours  of  subsequent  commentators.  It 
may,  perhaps,  be  still  open  to  doubt,  who 
was  the  Florid  Youth  referred  to  in  the 
Epilogue  to  the  Satires,  — 

'  And  how  did,  pray,  the  Florid  Youth  offend 
Whose  speech  you  took  and  gave  it  to  a  friend  ?' 

Bowles  said  it  was  Lord  Hervey,  and  that 
the  adjective  is  due  to  his  lordship's  well- 
known  practice  of  painting  himself  ;  but 
Mr.  Croker,  who  knew  everything,  and  was 
in  the  habit  of  contradicting  the  Duke  of 
Wellington  about  the  battle  of  Waterloo, 


IOO  POPE. 

says,  'Certainly  not.     The  Florid  Youth 
was  young  Henry  Fox.' 

Sometimes,  indeed,  in  our  hours  of  lan- 
guor and  dejection,  when 

'  The  heart  is  sick, 
And  all  the  wheels  of  being  slow,' 

the  question  forces  itself  upon  us,  What 
can  it  matter  who  the  Florid  Youth  was, 
and  who  cares  how  he  offended  ?  But  this 
questioning  spirit  must  be  checked.  '  The 
proper  study  of  mankind  is  man/  and  that 
title  cannot  be  denied  even  to  a  florid 
youth.  Still,  as  I  was  saying,  people  did 
not  like  it  at  the  time,  and  the  then  Duke 
of  Argyll  said,  in  his  place  in  the  House 
of  Lords,  that  if  anybody  so  much  as 
named  him  in  an  invective,  he  would  first 
run  him  through  the  body,  and  then  throw 
himself  —  not  out  of  the  window,  as  one 
was  charitably  hoping  —  but  on  a  much 
softer  place  —  the  consideration  of  their 
Lordships'  House.  Some  persons  of  qual- 
ity, of  less  truculent  aspect  than  McCallum 
More,  thought  to  enlist  the  poet's  services, 
and  the  Duchess  of  Buckingham  got  him 
to  write  an  epitaph  on  her  deceased  son  — 
a  feeble  lad,  —  to  which  transaction  the 


POPE.  IOI 

poet  is  thought  to  allude  in  the  pleasing 
lines, 

'  But  random  praise  —  the  task  can  ne'er  be  done, 
Each  mother  asks  it  for  her  booby  son.' 

Mr.  Alderman  Barber  asked  it  for  him- 
self, and  was  willing  —  so  at  least  it  was 
reported  —  to  pay  for  it  at  the  Handsome 
figure  of  ,£4,000  for  a  single  couplet.  Pope, 
however,  who  was  not  mercenary,  declined 
to  gratify  the  alderman,  who  by  his  will 
left  the  poet  a  legacy  of  ;£ioo,  possibly 
hoping  by  this  benefaction,  if  he  could  not 
be  praised  in  his  lifetime,  at  all  events  to 
escape  posthumous  abuse.  If  this  were 
his  wish  it  was  gratified,  and  the  alderman 
sleeps  unsung. 

Pope  greatly  enjoyed  the  fear  he  excited. 

With  something  of  exultation  he  sings : — 

'  Yes,  I  am  proud,  I  must  be  proud  to  see 
Men,  not  afraid  of  God,  afraid  of  me ; 
Safe  frdm  the  bar,  the  pulpit,  and  the  throne, 
Yet  touched  and  shamed  by  ridicule  alone. 
Oh  sacred  weapon  !  left  for  Truth's  defence, 
Sole  dread  of  folly,  vice,  and  insolence ! 
To  all  but  heaven-directed  hands  denied, 
The  Muse  may  give  thee,  but  the  gods  must  guide : 
Reverent  I  touch  thee,  but  with  honest  zeal, 
To  rouse  the  watchmen  of  the  public  weal, 
To  Virtue's  work  provoke  the  tardy  Hall, 


IO2  POPE. 

And  goad  the  prelate  slumb'ring  in  his  stall. 
Ye  tinsel  insects  !  whom  a  court  maintains, 
That  counts  your  beauties  only  by  your  stains, 
Spin  all  your  cobwebs  o'er  the  eye  of  day 
The  Muse's  wing  shall  brush  you  all  away, 
All  his  grace  preaches,  all  his  lordship  sings, 
All  that  makes  saints  of  queens,  and  gods  of  kings 
All,  all  but  truth  drops  dead-born  from  the  press, 
Like  the  last  gazette,  or  the  last  address.' 

The  poet  himself  was  very  far  from  be- 
ing invulnerable,  and  he  writhed  at  every 
sarcasm.  There  was  one  of  his  contempo- 
raries of  whom  he  stood  in  mortal  dread, 
and  yet  whose  name  he  was  too  frightened 
even  to  mention.  It  is  easy  to  guess  who 
this  was.  It  was  Hogarth,  who  in  one  of  his 
caricatures  had  depicted  Pope  as  a  hunch- 
back, whitewashing  Burlington  House. 
Pope  deemed  this  the  most  grievous  insult 
of  his  life,  but  he  said  nothing  about  it ; 
the  spiteful  pencil  proving  more  than  mas- 
ter of  the  poisoned  pen. 

Pope  died  on  May  soth,  1744,  bravely 
and  cheerfully  enough.  His  doctor  was 
offering  him  one  day  the  usual  encourage- 
ments, telling  him  his  breath  was  easier, 
and  so  on,  when  a  friend  entered,  to  whom 
the  poet  exclaimed,  '  Here  I  am,  dying  of 


POPE.  103 

a  hundred  good  symptoms.'  In  Spence's 
Anecdotes  there  is  another  story,  pitched  in 
a  higher  key:  'Shortly  before  his  death,- 
he  said  to  me,  "  What 's  that  ?  "  pointing 
into  the  air  with  a  very  steady  regard,  and 
then  looked  down  on  me  and  said,  with  a 
smile  of  great  pleasure,  and  with  the  great- 
est softness,  "'Twasa  vision."  It  may 
have  been  so.  At  the  very  last  he  con- 
sented to  allow  a  priest  to  be  sent  for,  who 
attended  and  administered  to  the  dying 
man  the  last  sacraments  of  the  Church. 
The  spirit  in  which  he  received  them  can- 
not be  pronounced  religious.  As  Cardinal 
Newman  has  observed,  Pope  was  an  unsat- 
isfactory Catholic. 

Pope  died  in  his  enemies'  day. 

Dr.  Arbuthnot,  who  was  acknowledged 
by  all  his  friends  to  have  been  the  best 
man  who  ever  lived,  be  the  second-best 
who  he  might,  had  predeceased  the  poet ; 
and  it  should  be  remembered,  before  we 
take  upon  ourselves  the  task  of  judging  a 
man  we  never  saw,  that  Dr.  Arbuthnot, 
who  was  as  shrewd  as  he  was  good,  had 
for  Pope  that  warm  personal  affection  we 
too  rarely  notice  nowadays  between  men 


IO4  POPE. 

of  mature  years.  Swift  said  of  Arbuthnot, 
'  Oh  !  if  the  world  had  but  a  dozen  Arbuth- 
nots  in  it  I  would  burn  my  Travels!  This 
may  be  doubted  without  damage  to  the 
friendly  testimony.  The  terrible  Dean 
himself,  whose  azure  eyes  saw  through 
most  pretences,  loved  Pope  ;  but  Swift  was 
now  worse  than  dead  —  he  was  mad,  dying 
a-top,  like  the  shivered  tree  he  once  gazed 
upon  with  horror  and  gloomy  forebodings 
of  impending  doom. 

Many  men  must  have  been  glad  when 
they  read  in  their  scanty  journals  that  Mr. 
Pope  lay  dead  at  his  villa  in  Twickenham. 
They  breathed  the  easier  for  the  news. 
Personal  satire  may  be  a  legitimate,  but  it 
is  an  ugly  weapon.  The  Muse  often  gives 
what  the  gods  do  not  guide  ;  and  though 
we  may  be  willing  that  our  faults  should 
be  scourged,  we  naturally  like  to  be  sure 
that  we  owe  our  sore  backs  to  the  black- 
ness of  our  guilt,  and  not  merely  to  the  fact 
that  we  have  the  proper  number  of  syllables 
to  our  names,  or  because  we  occasionally 
dine  with  an  enemy  of  our  scourger. 

But  living  as  we  do  at  a  convenient  dis- 
tance from  Mr.  Pope,  we  may  safely  wish 


FOPE.  105 

his  days  had  been  prolonged,  not  necessa- 
rily to  those  of  his  mother,  but  to  the 
Psalmist's  span,  so  that  he  might  have 
witnessed  the  dawn  of  a  brighter  day. 
1744  was  the  nadir  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury. With  Macbeth  the  dying  Pope  might 
have  exclaimed,  — 

'  Renown  and  grace  is  dead, 
The  wine  of  life  is  drawn,  and  the  mere  lees 
Is  left  in  the  vault  to  brag  of.' 

The  feats  of  arms  that  have  made  the 
first  ministry  of  the  elder  Pitt  for  ever 
glorious  would  have  appealed  to  Pope's 
better  nature,  and  made  him  forget  the 
scandals  of  the  court  and  the  follies  of  the 
town.  Who  knows  but  they  might  have 
stirred  him,  for  he  was  not  wholly  without 
the  true  poet's  prophetic  gift,  which  dreams 
of  things  to  come,  to  foretell,  in  that  ani- 
mated and  animating  style  of  his,  which 
has  no  rival  save  glorious  John  Dryden's, 
the  expansion  of  England,  and  how,  in  far- 
off  summers  he  should  never  see,  English 
maidens,  living  under  the  Southern  Cross, 
should  solace  their  fluttering  hearts  before 
laying  themselves  down  to  sleep  with  some 
favourite  bit  from  his  own  Eloisa  to  Abe- 


IO6  POPE. 

lard  ?  Whether,  in  fact,  maidens  in  those 
latitudes  do  read  Eloisa  before  blowing  out 
their  candles  I  cannot  say  ;  but  Pope,  I 
warrant,  would  have  thought  they  would. 
And  they  might  do  worse  —  and  better. 

Both  as  a  poet  and  a  man  Pope  had 
many  negations. 

'  Of  love,  that  sways  the  sun  and  all  the  stars,' 

he  knew  absolutely  nothing.  Even  of  the 
lesser  light, 

'  The  eternal  moon  of  love, 
Under  whose  motions  life's  dull  billows  move,' 

he  knew  but  little. 

His  Eloisa,  splendid  as  is  its  diction,  and 
vigorous  though  be  the  portrayal  of  the 
miserable  creature  to  whom  the  poem  re- 
lates, most  certainly  lacks  '  a  gracious  some- 
what,' whilst  no  less  certainly  is  it  marred 
by  a  most  unfeeling  coarseness.  A  poem 
about  love  it  may  be  —  a  love-poem  it  is 
not.  Of  the  '  wild  benefit  of  nature,'  — 

'  The  silence  that  is  in  the  starry  sky, 
The  sleep  that  is  among  the  lonely  hills,' 

Pope  had  small  notion,  though  there  is  just 
a  whiff  of  Wordsworth  in  an  observation 
he  once  hazarded,  that  a  tree  is  a  more  po- 


POPE.  IO7 

etical  object  than  a  prince  in  his  coronation 
robes.  His  taste  in  landscape  gardening 
was  honoured  with  the  approbation  of  Hor- 
ace Walpole,  and  he  spent  ;£i,ooo  upon  a 
grotto,  which  incurred  the  ridicule  of  John- 
son. Of  that  indescribable  something,  that 
'greatness*  which  causes  Dryden  to  uplift 
a  lofty  head  from  the  deep  pit  of  his  cor- 
ruption, neither  Pope's  character  nor  his 
style  bears  any  trace.  But  still,  both  as 
a  poet  and  a  man  we  must  give  place,  and 
even  high  place,  to  Pope.  About  the  poetry 
there  can  be  no  question.  A  man  with  his 
wit,  and  faculty  of  expression,  and  infinite 
painstaking,  is  not  to  be  evicted  from  his 
ancient  homestead  in  the  affections  and 
memories  of  his  people  by  a  rabble  of  crit- 
ics, or  even  a  posse  of  poets.  As  for  the 
man,  he  was  ever  eager  and  interested  in 
life.  Beneath  all  his  faults  —  for  which 
he  had  more  excuse  than  a  whole  congre- 
gation of  the  righteous  need  ever  hope  to 
muster  for  their  own  shortcomings  —  we 
recognise  humanity,  and  we  forgive  much 
to  humanity,  knowing  how  much  need 
there  is  for  humanity  to  forgive  us.  In- 
difference, known  by  its  hard  heart  and  its 


IO8  POPE., 

callous  temper,  is  the  only  unpardonable 
sin.  Pope  never  committed  it.  He  had 
much  to  put  up  with.  We  have  much  to 
put  up  with  —  in  him.  He  has  given  enor- 
mous pleasure  to  generations  of  men,  and 
will  continue  so  to  do.  We  can  never  give 
him  any  pleasure.  The  least  we  can  do  is 
to  smile  pleasantly  as  we  replace  him  upon 
his  shelf,  and  say,  as  we  truthfully  may, 
'  There  was  a  great  deal  of  human  nature 
in  Alexander  Pope.' 


DR.   JOHNSON. 

IF  we  should  ever  take  occasion  to  say 
of  Dr.  Johnson's  Preface  to  Shakspeare 
what  he  himself  said  of  a  similar  produc- 
tion of  the  poet  Rowe,  '  that  it  does  not 
discover  much  profundity  or  penetration,' 
we  ought  in  common  fairness  always  to 
add  that  nobody  else  has  ever  written 
about  Shakspeare  one-half  so  entertain- 
ingly. If  this  statement  be  questioned, 
let  the  doubter,  before  reviling  me,  re-read 
the  Preface,  and  if,  after  he  has  done  so, 
he  still  demurs,  we  shall  be  content  to 
withdraw  the  observation,  which,  indeed, 
has  only  been  made  for  the  purpose  of  in- 
troducing a  quotation  from  the  Preface 
itself. 

In  that  document,  Dr.  Johnson,  with  his 
unrivalled  stateliness,  writes  as  follows :  — 
'  The  poet  of  whose  works  I  have  under- 
taken the  revision  may  now  begin  to 


HO  DR.   JOHNSON. 

assume  the  dignity  of  an  ancient,  and 
claim  the  privilege  of  established  fame  and 
prescriptive  veneration.  He  has  long  out- 
lived his  century,  the  term  commonly  fixed 
as  the  test  of  literary  merit.' 

The  whirligig  of  time  has  brought  in  his 
revenges.  The  Doctor  himself  has  been 
dead  his  century.  He  died  on  the  I3th  of 
December,  1784.  Come,  let  us  criticise  him. 

Our  qualifications  for  this  high  office 
need  not  be  investigated  curiously. 

'  Criticism,'  writes  Johnson  in  the  6oth 
Idler,  '  is  a  study  by  which  men  grow 
important  and  formidable  at  a  very  small 
expense.  The  power  of  invention  has 
been  conferred  by  nature  upon  few,  and 
the  labour  of  learning  those  sciences  which 
may  by  mere  labour  be  obtained,  is  too 
great  to  be  willingly  endured ;  but  every 
man  can  exert  such  judgment  as  he  has 
upon  the  works  of  others ;  and  he  whom 
nature  has  made  weak,  and  idleness  keeps 
ignorant,  may  yet  support  his  vanity  by 
the  name  of  a  critick.'  « 

To  proceed  with  our  task  by  the  method 
of  comparison  is  to  pursue  a  course  open 
to  grave  objection,  yet  it  is  forced  upon  us 


DR.  JOHNSON.  I  I  I 

when  we  find,  as  we  lately  did,  a  writer  in 
the  Times  newspaper,  in  the  course  of  a 
not  very  discriminating  review  of  Mr. 
Froude's  recent  volumes,  casually  remark- 
ing, as  if  it  admitted  of  no  more  doubt 
than  the  day's  price  of  consols,  that  Car- 
lyle  was  a  greater  man  than  Johnson.  It 
is  a  good  thing  to  be  positive.  To  be  pos- 
itive in  your  opinions  and  selfish  in  your 
habits  is  the  best  recipe,  if  not  for  happi- 
ness, at  all  events  for  that  far  more  attain- 
able commodity,  comfort,  with  which  we 
are  acquainted.  'A  noisy  man,'  sang  poor 
Cowper,  who  could  not  bear  anything 
louder  than  the  hissing  of  a  tea-urn,  '  a 
noisy  man  is  always  in  the  right,'  and  a 
positive  man  can  seldom  be  proved  wrong. 
Still,  in  literature  it  is  very  desirable  to 
preserve  a  moderate  measure  of  independ- 
ence, and  we,  therefore,  make  bold  to  ask 
whether  it  is  as  plain  as  the  'old  hill  of 
Howth,'  that  Carlyle  was  a  greater  man 
than  Johnson  ?  Is  not  the  precise  contrary 
the  truth?  No  abuse  of  Carlyle  need  be 
looked  for  here  or  from  me.  When  a  man 
of  genius  and  of  letters  happens  to  have 
any  striking  virtues,  such  as  purity,  tern- 


112  DR.   JOHNSON. 

perance,  honesty,  the  novel  task  of  dwell- 
ing on  them  has  such  attraction  for  us, 
that  we  are  content  to  leave  the  elucida- 
tion of  his  faults  to  his  personal  friends, 
and  to  stern,  unbending  moralists  like  Mr. 
Edmund  Yates  and  the  World  newspaper.* 
To  love  Carlyle  is,  thanks  to  Mr.  Froude's 
superhuman  ideal  of  friendship,  a  task  of 
much  heroism,  almost  meriting  a  pension  ; 
still  it  is  quite  possible  for  the  candid 
and  truth  loving  soul.  But  a  greater  than 
Johnson  he  most  certainly  was  not. 

There  is  a  story  in  Boswell  of  an  ancient 
beggar-woman  who,  whilst  asking  an  alms 
of  the  Doctor,  described  herself  to  him,  in 
a  lucky  moment  for  her  pocket,  as  '  an  old 
straggler.'  Johnson,  his  biographer  tells 
us,  was  visibly  affected.  The  phrase  stuck 
to  his  memory,  and  was  frequently  applied 
to  himself.  '  I  too,'  so  he  would  say,  '  am 
an  old  straggler.'  So  too,  in  all  conscience, 
was  Carlyle.  The  struggles  of  Johnson 
have  long  been  historical ;  those  of  Carlyle 
have  just  become  so.  We  are  interested 
in  both.  To  be  indifferent  would  be  in- 

*  "The  late  Mr.  Carlyle  was  a  brute  and  a  boor."  — 
The  World,  October  2Qth,  1884. 


DR.   JOHNSON.  113 

human.  Both  men  had  great  endowments, 
tempestuous  natures,  hard  lots.  They 
were  not  amongst  Dame  Fortune's  favor- 
ites. They  had  to  fight  their  way.  What 
they  took  they  took  by  storm.  But  —  and 
here  is  a  difference  indeed,  —  Johnson 
came  off  victorious,  Carlyle  did  not. 

Boswell's  book  is  an  arch  of  triumph, 
through  which,  as  we  read,  we  see  his  hero 
passing  into  eternal  fame,  to  take  up  his 
place  with  those  — 

'  Dead  but  sceptred  sovereigns  who  still  rule 
Our  spirits  from  their  urns.' 

Froude's  book  is  a  tomb  over  which  the 
lovers  of  Carlyle's  genius  will  never  cease 
to  shed  tender  but  regretful  tears. 

We  doubt  whether  there  is  in  English 
literature  a  more  triumphant  book  than 
Boswell's.  What  materials  for  tragedy  are 
wanting  ?  Johnson  was  a  man  of  strong 
passions,  unbending  spirit,  violent  temper, 
as  poor  as  a  church-mouse,  and  as  proud  as 
the  proudest  of  Church  dignitaries  ;  en- 
dowed with  the  strength  of  a  coal-heaver, 
the  courage  of  a  lion,  and  the  tongue  of 
Dean  Swift,  he  could  knock  down  booksel- 
lers and  silence  bargees  ;  he  was  melan- 


114  '  DR'  JOHNSON. 

choly  almost  to  madness,  '  radically  wretch- 
ed,' indolent,  blinded,  diseased.  Poverty 
was  long  his  portion  ;  not  that  genteel  pov- 
erty that  is  sometimes  behindhand  with  its 
rent,  but  that  hungry  poverty  that  does  not 
know  where  to  look  for  its  dinner.  Against 
all  these  things  had  this  '  old  struggler '  to 
contend  ;  over  all  these  things  did  this  '  old 
struggler '  prevail.  Over  even  the  fear  of 
death,  the  giving  up  of  this  'intellectual 
being,'  which  had  haunted  his  gloomy  fancy 
for  a  lifetime,  he  seems  finally  to  have  pre- 
vailed, and  to  have  met  his  end  as  a  brave 
man  should. 

Carlyle,  writing  to  his  wife,  says,  and 
truthfully  enough,  '  The  more  the  devil 
worries  me  the  more  I  wring  him  by  the 
nose  ;'  but  then  if  the  devil's  was  the  only 
nose  that  was  wrung  in  the  transaction, 
why  need  Carlyle  cry  out  so  loud  ?  After 
buffeting  one's  way  through  the  storm- 
tossed  pages  of  Fronde's  Carlyle —  in  which 
the  universe  is  stretched  upon  the  rack  be- 
cause food  disagrees  with  man  and  cocks 
crow  —  with  what  thankfulness  and  rever- 
ence do  we  read  once  again  the  letter  in 
which  Johnson  tells  Mrs.  Thrale  how  he 


DR.  JOHNSON:  115 

has  been  called  to  endure,  not  dyspepsia  or 
sleeplessness,  but  paralysis  itself  :  — 

'  On  Monday  I  sat  for  my  picture,  and 
walked  a  considerable  way  with  little  in- 
convenience. In  the  afternoon  and  even- 
ing I  felt  myself  light  and  easy,  and  began 
to  plan  schemes  of  life.  Thus  I  went  to 
bed,  and,  in  a  short  time,  waked  and  sat  up, 
as  has  long  been  my  custom ;  when  I  felt 
a  confusion  in  my  head  which  lasted,  I  sup- 
pose, about  half  a  minute  ;  I  was  alarmed, 
and  prayed  God  that  however  much  He 
might  afflict  my  body  He  would  spare  my 
understanding.  .  .  .  Soon  after  I  perceived 
that  I  had  suffered  a  paralytic  stroke,  and 
that  my  speech  was  taken  from  me.  I  had 
no  pain,  and  so  little  dejection,  in  this  dread- 
ful state,  that  I  wondered  at  my  own  apa- 
thy, and  considered  that  perhaps  death  it- 
self, when  it  should  come,  would  excite  less 
horror  than  seems  now  to  attend  it.  In 
order  to  rouse  the  vocal  organs  I  took  two 
drams.  ...  I  then  went  to  bed,  and,  strange 
as  it  may  seem,  I  think,  slept.  When  I 
saw  light  it  was  time  I  should  contrive 
what  I  should  do.  Though  God  stopped 
my  speech,  He  left  me  my  hand.  I  en- 


Il6  DR.   JOHNSON. 

joyed  a  mercy  which  was  not  granted  to 
my  dear  friend  Lawrence,  who  now  per- 
haps overlooks  me,  as  I  am  writing,  and 
rejoices  that  I  have  what  he  wanted.  My 
first  note  was  necessarily  to  my  servant, 
who  came  in  talking,  and  could  not  imme- 
diately comprehend  why  he  should  read 
what  I  put  into  his  hands.  .  .  .  How  this 
will  be  received  by  you  I  know  not  I 
hope  you  will  sympathise  with  me  ;  but 
perhaps 

' "  My  mistress,  gracious,  mild,  and  good, 

Cries  —  Is  he  dumb  ?     'T  is  time  he  shou'd." 

'  I  suppose  you  may  wish  to  know  how 
my  disease  is  treated  by  the  physicians. 
They  put  a  blister  upon  my  back,  and  two 
from  my  ear  to  my  throat,  one  on  a  side. 
The  blister  on  the  back  has  done  little, 
and  those  on  the  throat  have  not  risen.  I 
bullied  and  bounced  (it  sticks  to  our  last 
sand),  and  compelled  the  apothecary  to 
make  his  salve  according  to  the  Edinburgh 
dispensatory,  that  it  might  adhere  better. 
I  have  now  two  on  my  own  prescription. 
They  likewise  give  me  salt  of  hartshorn, 
which  I  take  with  no  great  confidence ;  but 
I  am  satisfied  that  what  can  be  done  is  done 


DR.   JOHNSON.  117 

for  me.  I  am  almost  ashamed  of  this  quer- 
ulous letter,  but  now  it  is  written  let  it  go.' 

This  is  indeed  tonic  and  bark  for  the 
mind. 

If,  irritated  by  a  comparison  that  ought 
never  to  have  been  thrust  upon  us,  we  ask 
why  it  is  that  the  reader  of  Boswell  finds 
it  as  hard  to  help  loving  Johnson  as  the 
reader  of  Froude  finds  it  hard  to  avoid  dis- 
liking Carlyle,  the  answer  must  be  that 
whilst  the  elder  man  of  letters  was  full  to 
overflowing  with  the  milk  of  human  kind- 
ness, the  younger  one  was  full  to  overflow- 
ing with  something  not  nearly  so  nice  ;  and 
that  whilst  Johnson  was  pre-eminently  a 
reasonable  man,  reasonable  in  all  his  de- 
mands and  expectations,  Carlyle  was  the 
most  unreasonable  mortal  that  ever  ex- 
hausted the  patience  of  nurse,  mother,  or 
wife. 

Of  Dr.  Johnson's  affectionate  nature  no- 
body has  written  with  nobler  appreciation 
than  Carlyle  himself.  '  Perhaps  it  is  this 
Divine  feeling  of  affection,  throughout 
manifested,  that  principally  attracts  us  to 
Johnson.  A  true  brother  of  men  is  he, 
and  filial  lover  of  the  earth.' 


Il8  DR.   JOHNSON. 

The  day  will  come  when  it  will  be  rec- 
ognised that  Carlyle,  as  a  critic,  is  to  be 
judged  by  what  he  himself  corrected  for 
the  press,  and  not  by  splenetic  entries  in 
diaries,  or  whimsical  extravagances  in  pri- 
vate conversation. 

Of  Johnson's  reasonableness  nothing 
need  be  said,  except  that  it  is  patent 
everywhere.  His  wife's  judgment  was  a 
sound  one  — '  He  is  the  most  sensible  man 
I  ever  met.' 

As  for  his  brutality,  of  which  at  one  time 
we  used  to  hear  a  great  deal,  we  cannot 
say  of  it  what  Hookham  Frere  said  of  Lan- 
dor's  immorality,  that  it  was  — 

'  Mere  imaginary  classicality 
Wholly  devoid  of  criminal  reality.' 

It  was  nothing  of  the  sort.  Dialectically 
the  great  Doctor  was  a  great  brute.  The 
fact  is  he  had  so  accustomed  himself  to 
wordy  warfare,  that  he  lost  all  sense  of 
moral  responsibility,  and  cared  as  little  for 
men's  feelings  as  a  Napoleon  did  for  their 
lives.  When  the  battle  was  over,  the  Doc- 
tor frequently  did  what  no  soldier  ever  did 
that  I  have  heard  tell  of,  apologised  to  his 
victims  and  drank  wine  or  lemonade  with 


DR.  JOHNSON.  119 

them.  It  must  also  be  remembered  that 
for  the  most  part  his  victims  sought  him 
out.  They  came  to  be  tossed  and  gored. 
And  after  all,  are  they  so  much  to  be  pitied  ? 
They  have  our  sympathy,  and  the  Doctor 
has  our  applause.  I  am  not  prepared  to 
say,  with  the  simpering  fello\y  with  weak 
legs  whom  David  Copperfield  met  at  Mr. 
Waterbrook's  dinner  table,  that  I  would 
sooner  be  knocked  down  by  a  man  with 
blood  than  picked  up  by  a  man  without 
any  ;  but,  argumentatively  speaking,  I 
think  it  would  be  better  for  a  man's  repu- 
tation to  be  knocked  down  by  Dr.  Johnson 
than  picked  up  by  Mr.  Froude. 

Johnson's  claim  to  be  the  best  of  ouf 
talkers  cannot,  on  our  present  materials, 
be  contested.  For  the  most  part  we  have 
only  talk  about  other  talkers.  Johnson's 
is  matter  of  record.  Carlyle  no  doubt  was 
a  great  talker  —  no  man  talked  against 
talk  or  broke  silence  to  praise  it  more  elo- 
quently than  he,  but  unfortunately  none  of 
it  is  in  evidence.  All  that  is  given  us  is  a 
sort  of  Commination  Service  writ  large. 
We  soon  weary  of  it.  Man  does  not  live 
by  curses  alone. 


I2O  DR.  JOHNSON. 

An  unhappier  prediction  of  a  boy's  fu- 
ture was  surely  never  made  than  that  of 
Johnson's  by  his  cousin,  Mr.  Cornelius 
Ford,  who  said  to  the  infant  Samuel,  'You 
will  make  your  way  the  more  easily  in  the 
world  as  you  are  content  to  dispute  no 
man's  claim  to  conversation  excellence, 
and  they  will,  therefore,  more  willingly  al- 
low your  pretensions  as  a  writer.'  Unfor- 
tunate Mr.  Ford  !  The  man  never  breathed 
whose  claim  to  conversation  excellence  Dr. 
Johnson  did  not  dispute  on  every  possible 
occasion,  whilst,  just  because  he  was  ad- 
mittedly so  good  a  talker,  his  pretensions 
as  a  writer  have  been  occasionally  slighted. 

Johnson's  personal  character  has  gener- 
ally been  allowed  to  stand  high.  It,  how- 
ever, has  not  been  submitted  to  recent 
tests.  To  be  the  first  to  'smell  a  fault' 
is  the  pride  of  the  modern  biographer. 
Boswell's  artless  pages  afford  useful  hints 
not  lightly  to  be  disregarded.  During  some 
portion  of  Johnson's  married  life  he  had 
lodgings,  first  at  Greenwich,  afterwards  at 
Hampstead.  But  he  did  not  always  go 
home  o'  nights  ;  sometimes  preferring  to 
roam  the  streets  with  that  vulgar  ruffian 


DR.  JOHNSON.  121 

Savage,  who  was  certainly  no  fit  company 
for  him.  He  once  actually  quarrelled  with 
'  Tetty,'  who,  despite  her  ridiculous  name, 
was  a  very  sensible  woman  with  a  very 
sharp  tongue,  and  for  a  season,  like  stars, 
they  dwelt  apart.  Of  the  real  merits  of 
this  dispute  we  must  resign  ourselves  to  ig- 
norance. The  materials  for  its  discussion 
do  not  exist ;  even  Croker  could  not  find 
them.  Neither  was  our  great  moralist  as 
sound  as  one  would  have  liked  to  see  him 
in  the  matter  of  the  payment  of  small 
debts.  When  he  came  to  die,  he  remem- 
bered several  of  these  outstanding  ac- 
counts ;  but  what  assurance  have  we  that 
he  remembered  them  all  ?  One  sum  of 
;£io  he  sent  across  to  the  honest  fellow 
from  whom  he  had  borrowed  it,  with  an 
apology  for  his  delay  ;  which,  since  it  had 
extended  over  a  period  of  twenty  years, 
was  not  superfluous.  I  wonder  whether 
he  ever  repaid  Mr.  Dilly  the  guinea  he 
once  borrowed  of  him  to  give  to  a  very 
small  boy  who  had  just  been  apprenticed 
to  a  printer.  If  he  did  not,  it  was  a  great 
shame.  That  he  was  indebted  to  Sir  Joshua 
in  a  small  loan  is  apparent  from  the  fact 


122  DR.  JOHNSON. 

that  it  was  one  of  his  three  dying  requests 
to  that  great  man  that  he  should  release 
him  from  it,  as,  of  course,  the  most  ami- 
able of  painters  did.  The  other  two  re- 
quests, it  will  be  remembered,  were  to  read 
his  Bible,  and  not  to  use  his  brush  on  Sun- 
days. The  good  Sir  Joshua  gave  the  de- 
sired promises  with  a  full  heart,  for  these 
two  great  men  loved  one  another ;  but 
subsequently  discovered  the  Sabbatical  re- 
striction not  a  little  irksome,  and  after  a 
while  resumed  his  former  practice,  arguing 
with  himself  that  the  Doctor  really  had  no 
business  to  extract  any  such  promise.  The 
point  is  a  nice  one,  and  perhaps  ere  this 
the  two  friends  have  met  and  discussed  it 
in  the  Elysian  fields.  If  so,  I  hope  the 
Doctor,  grown  'angelical,'  kept  his  temper 
with  the  mild  shade  of  Reynolds  better 
than  on  the  historical  occasion  when  he 
discussed  with  him  the  question  of  'strong 
drinks.' 

Against  Garrick,  Johnson  undoubtedly 
cherished  a  smouldering  grudge,  which, 
however,  he  never  allowed  anyone  but 
himself  to  fan  into  flame.  His  pique  was 
natural.  Garrick  had  been  his  pupil  at 


DR.   JOHNSON.  123 

Edial,  near  Lichfield ;  they  had  come  up 
to  town  together  with  an  easy  united  for- 
tune of  fourpence  —  '  current  coin  o'  the 
realm.'  Garrick  soon  had  the  world  at  his 
feet  and  garnered  golden  grain.  Johnson 
became  famous  too,  but  remained  poor  and 
dingy.  Garrick  surrounded  himself  with 
what  only  money  can  buy,  good  pictures 
and  rare  books.  Johnson  cared  nothing 
for  pictures  —  how  should  he  ?  he  could 
not  see  them ;  but  he  did  care  a  great 
deal  about  books,  and  the  pernickety  little 
player  was  chary  about  lending  his  splen- 
didly bound  rarities  to  his  quondam  pre- 
ceptor. Our  sympathies  in  this  matter  are 
entirely  with  Garrick  ;  Johnson  was  one  of 
the  best  men  that  ever  lived,  but  not  to 
lend  books  to.  Like  Lady  Slattern,  he 
had  a  'most  observant  thumb.'  But  Gar- 
rick had  no  real  cause  for  complaint.  John- 
son may  have  soiled  his  folios  and  sneered 
at  his  trade,  but  in  life  Johnson  loved  Gar- 
rick, and  in  death  embalmed  his  memory 
in  a  sentence  which  can  only  die  with  the 
English  language  :  '  I  am  disappointed  by 
that  stroke  of  death  which  has  eclipsed 
the  gaiety  of  nations,  and  impoverished 
the  public  stock  of  harmless  pleasure.' 


124  DR.   JOHNSON. 

Will  it  be  believed  that  puny  critics  have 
been  found  to  quarrel  with  this  colossal 
compliment  on  the  poor  pretext  of  its 
falsehood  ?  Garrick's  death,  urge  these 
dullards,  could  not  possibly  have  eclipsed 
the  gaiety  of  nations,  since  he  had  retired 
from  the  stage  months  previous  to  his  de- 
mise. When  will  mankind  learn  that  lit- 
erature is  one  thing,  and  sworn  testimony 
another  ? 

Johnson's  relations  with  Burke  were  of 
a  more  crucial  character.  The  author  of 
Rasselas  and  The  English  Dictionary  can 
never  have  been  really  jealous  of  Garrick, 
or  in  the  very  least  desirous  of  '  bringing 
down  the  house  ; '  but  Burke  had  done 
nobler  things  than  that.  He  had  made 
politics  philosophical,  and  had  at  least 
tried  to  cleanse  them  from  the  dust  and 
cobwebs  of  party.  Johnson,  though  he 
had  never  sat  in  the  House  of  Commons, 
had  yet,  in  his  capacity  of  an  unauthorised 
reporter,  put  into  the  mouths  of  honoura- 
ble members  much  better  speeches  than 
ever  came  out  of  them,  and  it  is  no  secret 
that  he  would  have  liked  to  make  a  speech 
or  two  on  his  own  account.  Burke  had 


DR.  JOHNSON.  12$ 

made  many.  Harder  still  to  bear,  there 
were  not  wanting  good  judges  to  say  that, 
in  their  opinion,  Burke  was  a  better  talker 
than  the  great  Samuel  himself.  To  cap  it 
all,  was  not  Burke  a  '  vile  Whig '  ?  The 
ordeal  was  an  unusually  trying  one.  John- 
son emerges  triumphant. 

Though  by  no  means  disposed  to  hear 
men  made  much  of,  he  always  listened 'to 
praise  of  Burke  with  a  boyish  delight.  He 
never  wearied  of  it.  When  any  new  proof 
of  Burke's  intellectual  prowess  was  brought 
to  his  notice,  he  would  exclaim  exultingly, 
'Did  we  not  always  say  he  was  a  great 
man  ? '  And  yet  how  admirably  did  this 
'  poor  scholar '  preserve  his  independence 
and  equanimity  of  mind  !  It  was  not  easy 
to  dazzle  the  Doctor.  What  a  satisfactory 
story  that  is  of  Burke  showing  Johnson 
over  his  fine  estate  at  Beaconsfield,  and 
expatiating  in  his  exuberant  style  on  its 
'liberties,  privileges,  easements,  rights,  and 
advantages,'  and  of  the  old  Doctor,  the 
tenant  of  '  a  two-pair  back '  somewhere  off 
Fleet  Street,  peering  cautiously  about,  crit- 
icising everything,  and  observing  with 
much  coolness,  — 


126  DR.  JOHNSON. 

'  Non  equidem  invideo,  miror  magis.' 

A  friendship  like  this  could  be  disturbed 
but  by  death,  and  accordingly  we  read  :  — 

'  Mr.  Langton  one  day  during  Johnson's 
last  illness  found  Mr.  Burke  and  four  or 
five  more  friends  sitting  with  Johnson. 
Mr.  Burke  said  to  him,  "  I  am  afraid,  sir, 
such  a  number  of  us  may  be  oppressive  to 
you."  "  No,  sir,"  said  Johnson,  "  it  is  not 
so ;  and  I  must  be  in  a  wretched  state  in- 
deed when  your  company  would  not  be  a 
delight  to  me."  Mr.  Burke,  in  a  tremulous 
voice,  expressive  of  being  very  tenderly  af- 
fected, replied,  "  My  dear  sir,  you  have  al- 
ways been  too  good  to  me."  Immediately 
afterwards  he  went  away.  This  was  the 
last  circumstance  in  the  acquaintance  of 
these  two  eminent  men.' 

But  this  is  a  well-worn  theme,  though, 
like  some  other  well-worn  themes,  still 
profitable  for  edification  or  rebuke.  A 
hundred  years  can  make  no  difference  to  a 
character  like  Johnson's,  or  to  a  biography 
like  Boswell's.  We  are  not  to  be  robbed 
of  our  conviction  that  this  man,  at  all 
events,  was  both  great  and  good. 

Johnson  the  author  is  not.  always  fairly 


DR.  JOHNSON.  127 

treated.  Phrases  are  convenient  things  to 
hand  about,  and  it  is  as  little  the  custom 
to  inquire  into  their  truth  as  itistoxead 
the  letterpress  on  banknotes.  We  are  con- 
tent to  count  banknotes,  and  to  repeat 
phrases.  One  of  these  phrases  is,  that 
whilst  everybody  reads  Boswell,  nobody 
reads  Johnson.  The  facts  are  otherwise. 
Everybody  does  not  read  Boswell,  and  a 
great  many  people  do  read  Johnson.  If 
it  be  asked,  What  do  the  general  public 
know  of  Johnson's  nine  volumes  octavo  ? 
I  reply,  Beshrew  the  general  public  !  What 
in  the  name  of  the  Bodleian  has  the  gen- 
eral public  got  to  do  with  literature  ?  The 
general  public  subscribes  to  Mudie,  and 
has  its  intellectual,  like  its  lacteal  suste- 
nance, sent  round  to  it  in  carts.  On  Sat- 
urdays these  carts,  laden  with  'recent 
works  in  circulation,'  traverse  the  Ux- 
bridge  Road  ;  on  Wednesdays  they  toil  up 
Highgate  Hill,  and  if  we  may  believe  the 
reports  of  travellers,  are  occasionally  seen 
rushing  through  the  wilds  of  Camberwell 
and  bumping  over  Blackheath.  It  is  not  a 
question  of  the  general  public,  but  of  the 
lover  of  letters.  Do  Mr.  Browning,  Mr. 


128  DR.   JOHNSON. 

Arnold,  Mr.  Lowell,  Mr.  Trevelyan,  Mr. 
Stephen,  Mr.  Morley.  know  their  Johnson  ? 
'  To  doubt  would  be  disloyalty.'  And 
what  these  big  men  know  in  their  big  way 
hundreds  of  little  men  know  in  their  little 
way.  We  have  no  writer  with  a  more  gen- 
uine literary  flavour  about  him  than  the 
great  Cham  of  literature.  No  man  of  let- 
ters loved  letters  better  than  he.  He  knew 
literature  in  all  its  branches  —  he  had  read 
books,  he  had  written  books,  he  had  sold 
books,  he  had  bought  books,  and  he  had 
borrowed  them.  Sluggish  and  inert  in  all 
other  directions,  he  pranced  through  li- 
braries. He  loved  a  catalogue ;  he  de- 
lighted in  an  index.  He  was,  to  employ 
a  happy  phrase  of  Dr.  Holmes,  at  home 
amongst  books,  as  a  stable-boy  is  amongst 
horses.  He  cared  intensely  about  the  fu- 
ture of  literature  and  the  fate  of  literary 
men.  'I  respect  Millar,'  he  once  ex- 
claimed ;  '  he  has  raised  the  price  of  litera- 
ture.' Now  Millar  was  a  Scotchman. 
Even  Home  Tooke  was  not  to  stand  in  the 
pillory :  *  No,  no,  the  dog  has  too  much  lit- 
erature for  that.'  The  only  time  the  au- 
thor of  Rasselas  met  the  author  of  the 


DK.   JOHNSON.  129 

Wealth  of  Nations  witnessed  a  painful 
scene.  The  English  moralist  gave  the 
Scotch  one  the  lie  direct,  and  the  Scotch 
moralist  applied  to  the  English  one  a 
phrase  which  would  have  done  discredit  to 
the  lips  of  a  costermonger ;  *  but  this  not- 
withstanding, when  Boswell  reported  that 
Adam  Smith  preferred  rhyme  to  blank 
verse,  Johnson  hailed  the  news  as  enthusi- 
astically as  did  Cedric  the  Saxon  the  Eng- 
lish origin  of  the  bravest  knights  in  the 
retinue  of  the  Norman  king.  '  Did  Adam 
say  that  ? '  he  shouted  :  '  I  love  him  for  it. 
I  could  hug  him  ! '  Johnson  no  doubt  hon- 
estly believed  he  held  George  III.  in  rev- 
erence, but  really  he  did  not  care  a  pin's 
fee  for  all  the  crowned  heads  of  Europe. 
All  his  reverence  was  reserved  for  '  poor 
scholars.'  When  a  small  boy  in  a  wherry, 
on  whom  had  devolved  the  arduous  task  of 
rowing  Johnson  and  his  biographer  across 
the  Thames,  said  he  would  give  all  he  had 
to  know  about  the  Argonauts,  the  Doctor 
was  much  pleased,  and  gave  him,  or  got 

*  Anyone  who  does  not  wish  this  story  to  be  true, 
will  find  good  reasons  for  disbelieving  it  stated  in  Mr. 
Napier's  edition  of  Boswell,  vol.  iv.,  p.  385. 


130  DR.  JOHNSON. 

Boswell  to  give  him,  a  double  fare.  He 
was  ever  an  advocate  of  the  spread  of 
knowledge  amongst  all  classes  and  both 
sexes.  His  devotion  to  letters  has  re- 
ceived its  fitting  reward,  the  love  and  re- 
spect of  all  '  lettered  hearts.' 

Considering  him  a  little  more  in  detail, 
we  find  it  plain  that  he  was  a  poet  of  no 
mean  order.  His  resonant  lines,  informed 
as  they  often  are  with  the  force  of  their 
author's  character  —  his  strong  sense,  his 
fortitude,  his  gloom  —  take  possession  of 
the  memory,  and  suffuse  themselves  through 
one's  entire  system  of  thought.  A  poet 
spouting  his  own  verses  is  usually  a  figure 
to  be  avoided ;  but  one  could  be  content 
to  be  a  hundred  and  thirty  next  birthday 
to  have  heard  Johnson  recite,  in  his  full 
sonorous  voice,  and  with  his  stately  elocu- 
tion, The  Vanity  of  Human  Wishes.  When 
he  came  to  the  following  lines,  he  usually 
broke  down,  and  who  can  wonder  ?  — 

'  Proceed,  illustrious  youth, 
And  virtue  guard  thee  to  the  throne  of  truth  ! 
Yet  should  thy  soul  indulge  the  gen'rous  heat 
Till  captive  science  yields  her  last  retreat ; 
Should  reason  guide  thee  with  her  brightest  ray, 
And  pour  on  misty  doubt  resistless  day ; 


DR.   JOHNSON.  131 

Should  no  false  kindness  lure  to  loose  delight, 
Nor  praise  relax,  nor  difficulty  fright ; 
Should  tempting  novelty  thy  cell  refrain, 
And  sloth  effuse  her  opiate  fumes  in  vain ; 
Should  beauty  blunt  on  fops  her  fatal  dart, 
Nor  claim  the  triumph  of  a  lettered  heart ; 
Should  no  disease  thy  torpid  veins  invade, 
Nor  melancholy's  phantoms  haunt  thy  shade ; 
Yet  hope  not  life  from  grief  or  danger  free, 
Nor  think  the  doom  of  man  revers'd  for  thee. 
Deign  on  the  passing  world  to  turn  thine  eyes, 
And  pause  a  while  from  letters  to  be  wise ; 
There  mark  what  ills  the  scholar's  life  assail, 
Toil,  envy,  want,  the  patron  and  the  gaol 
See  nations,  slowly  wise  and  meanly  just, 
To  buried  merit  raise  the  tardy  bust. 
If  dreams  yet  flatter,  once  again  attend, 
Hear  Lydiat's  life,  and  Galileo's  end.' 

If  this  be  not  poetry,  may  the  name 
perish  ! 

In  another  style,  the  stanzas  on  the 
young  heir's  majority  have  such  great 
merit  as  to  tempt  one  to  say  that  the 
author  of  The  Jolly  Beggars,  Robert  Burns, 
himself,  might  have  written  them.  Here 
are  four  of  them  :  — 

1  Loosen'd  from  the  minor's  tether, 

Free  to  mortgage  or  to  sell ; 
Wild  as  wind  and  light  as  feather, 
Bid  the  sons  of  thrift  farewell. 


132  DR.   JOHNSON. 

'  Call  the  Betseys,  Kates,  and  Jennies, 

All  the  names  that  banish  care. 
Lavish  of  your  grandsire's  guineas, 
Show  the  spirit  of  an  he'ir. 

'  Wealth,  my  lad,  was  made  to  wander, 

Let  it  wander  as  it  will ; 
Call  the  jockey,  call  the  pander, 
Bid  them  come  and  take  their  fill. 

'  When  the  bonny  blade  carouses, 
Pockets  full  and  spirits  high  — 
What  are  acres  ?  what  are  houses  ? 
Only  dirt  —  or  wet  or  dry.' 

Johnson's  prologues,  and  his  lines  on 
the  death  of  Robert  Levet,  are  well 
known.  Indeed,  it  is  only  fair  to  say  that 
our  respected  friend,  the  General  Public, 
frequently  has  Johnsonian  tags  on  its 
tongue  :  — 

'  Slow  rises  worth  by  poverty  depressed.' 

'  The  unconquered  lord  of  pleasure  and  of  pain.' 

'  He  left  the  name  at  which  the  world  grew  pale 
To  point  a  moral  or  adorn  a  tale.' 

'  Death,  kind  nature's  signal  of  retreat.' 
'  Panting  time  toiled  after  him  in  vain.' 

All  these  are  Johnson's,  who,  though  he 
is  not,  like  Gray,  whom  he  hated  so,  all 


DR.    JOHNSON.  133 

quotations,  is  yet  oftener  in  men's  mouths 
than  they  perhaps  wot  of. 

Johnson's  tragedy,  Irene,  need  not  de- 
tain us.  It  is  unreadable  ;  and  to  quote 
his  own  sensible  words,  '  It  is  useless  to 
criticise  what  nobody  reads.'  It  was  in- 
deed the  expressed  opinion  of  a  contem- 
porary, called  Pot,  that  Irene  was  the  finest 
tragedy  of  modern  times  ;  but  on  this  judg- 
ment of  Pot's  being  made  known  to  John- 
son, he  was  only  heard  to  mutter,  '  If  Pot 
says  so,  Pot  lies,'  as  no  doubt  he  did. 

Johnson's  Latin  Verses  have  not  escaped 
the  condemnation  of  scholars.  Whose  have  ? 
The  true  mode  of  critical  approach  to  copies 
of  Latin  verse  is  by  the  question  —  How 
bad  are  they  ?  Croker  took  the  opinion  of 
the  Marquess  Wellesley  as  to  the  degree 
of  badness  of  Johnson's  Latin  Exercises. 
Lord  Wellesley,  as  became  so  distinguished 
an  Etonian,  felt  the  solemnity  of  the  occa- 
sion, and,  after  bargaining  for  secrecy,  gave 
it  as  his  opinion  that  they  were  all  very 
bad,  but  that  some  perhaps  were  worse  than 
others.  To  this  judgment  I  have  nothing 
to  add. 

As  a  writer  of  English  prose,  Johnson 


134  DR-   JOHNSON. 

has  always  enjoyed  a  great,  albeit  a  some- 
what awful  reputation.  In  childish  memo- 
ries he  is  constrained  to-  be  associated  with 
dust  and  dictionaries,  and  those  provoking 
obstacles  to  a  boy's  reading — 'long  words.' 
It  would  be  easy  to  select  from  Johnson's 
writings  numerous  passages  written  in  that 
essentially  vicious  style  to  which  the  name 
Johnsonese  has  been  cruelly  given  ;  but 
the  searcher  could  not  fail  to  find  many 
passages  guiltless  of  this  charge.  The  char- 
acteristics of  Johnson's  prose  style  are  co- 
lossal good  sense,  though  with  a  strong 
sceptical  bias,  good  humour,  vigorous  lan- 
guage, and  movement  from  point  to  point, 
which  can  only  be  compared  to  the  meas- 
ured tread  of  a  well-drilled  company  of  sol- 
diers. Here  is  a  passage  from  the  Preface 
to  Shakspeare  :  — '  Notes  are  often  neces- 
sary, but  they  are  necessary  evils.  Let 
him  that  is  yet  unacquainted  with  the  pow- 
ers of  Shakspeare,  and  who  desires  to  feel 
the  highest  pleasure  that  the  drama  can 
give,  read  every  play  from  the  first  scene 
to  the  last,  with  utter  negligence  of  all  his 
commentators.  When  his  fancy  is  once 
on  the  wing,  let  it  not  stoop  at  correction 


DR.   JOHNSOtf,  135 

or  explanation.  When  his  attention  is 
strongly  engaged,  let  it  disdain  alike  to 
turn  aside  to  the  name  of  Theobald  and  of 
Pope.  Let  him  read  on,  through  bright- 
ness and  obscurity,  through  integrity  and 
corruption  ;  let  him  preserve  his  compre- 
hension of  the  dialogue  and  his  interest  in 
the  fable.  And  when  the  pleasures  of  nov- 
elty have  ceased,  let  him  attempt  exactness 
and  read  the  commentators.' 

Where  are  we  to  find  better  sense,  or 
much  better  English  ? 

In  the  pleasant  art  of  chaffing  an  author 
Johnson  has  hardly  an  equal.  De  Quincey 
too  often  overdoes  it.  Macaulay  seldom 
fails  to  excite  sympathy  with  his  victim.  In 
playfulness  Mr.  Arnold  perhaps  surpasses 
the  Doctor,  but  then  the  latter's  playfulness 
is  always  leonine,  whilst  Mr.  Arnold's  is 
surely,  sometimes,  just  a  trifle  kittenish. 
An  example,  no  doubt  a  very  good  one,  of 
Johnson's  humour  must  be  allowed  me. 
Soame  Jenyns,  in  his  book  on  the  Origin 
of  Evil,  had  imagined  that,  as  we  have  not 
only  animals  for  food,  but  choose  some  for 
our  diversion,  the  same  privilege  may  be 
allowed  to  beings  above  us,  '  who  may  de- 


136  DR.   JOHNSON. 

ceive,  torment,  or  destroy  us  for  the  ends 
only  of  their  own  pleasure.' 

On  this  hint  writes  our  merry  -Doctor  as 
follows  :  — 

'  I  cannot  resist  the  temptation  of  con- 
templating this  analogy,  which  I  think  he 
might  have  carried  farther,  very  much  to 
the  advantage  of  his  argument.  He  might 
have  shown  that  these  "hunters,  whose 
game  is  man,"  have  many  sports,  analo- 
gous to  our  own.  As  we  drown  whelps  or 
kittens  they  amuse  themselves  now  and 
then  with  sinking  a  ship,  and  stand  round 
the  fields  of  Blenheim,  or  the  walls  of 
Prague,  as  we  encircle  a  cockpit.  As  we 
shoot  a  bird  flying,  they  take  a  man  in  the 
midst  of  his  business  or  pleasure,  and  knock 
him  down  with  an  apoplexy.  Some  of  them 
perhaps  are  virtuosi,  and  delight  in  the 
operations  of  an  asthma,  as  a  human  phi- 
losopher in  the  effects  of  the  air-pump. 
Many  a  merry  bout  have  these  frolick 
beings  at  the  vicissitudes  of  an  ague,  and 
good  sport  it  is  to  see  a  man  tumble  with 
an  epilepsy,  and  revive,  and  tumble  again, 
and  all  this  he  knows  not  why.  The 
paroxysms  of  the  gout  and  stone  must  un- 


DR.   JOHNSON.  137 

doubteclly  make  "high  mirth,  especially  if 
the  play  be  a  little  diversified  with  the 
blunders  and  puzzles  of  the  blind  and  deaf. 
.  .  .  One  sport  the  merry  malice  of  these 
beings  has  found  means  of  enjoying,  to 
which  we  have  nothing  equal  or  similar. 
They  now  and  then  catch  a  mortal,  proud 
of  his  parts,  and  flattered  either  .by  the 
submission  of  those  who  court  his  kindness, 
or  the  notice  of  those  who  suffer  him  to 
court  theirs.  A  head  thus  prepared  for  the 
reception  of  false  opinions,  and  the  projec- 
tion of  vain  designs,  they  easily  fill  with 
idle  notions,  till,  in  time,  they  make  their 
plaything  an  author ;  their  first  diversion 
commonly  begins  with  an  ode  or  an  epistle, 
then  rises  perhaps  to  a  political  irony,  and 
is  at  last  brought  to  its  height  by  a  treatise 
of  philosophy.  Then  begins  the  poor  ani- 
mal to  entangle  himself  in  sophisms  and  to 
flounder  in  absurdity.' 

The  author  of  the  philosophical  treatise 
A  Free  Inquiry  into  the  Nature  and  Origin 
of  Evil  did  not  at  all  enjoy  this  '  merry 
bout '  of  the  '  frolick '  Johnson. 

The  concluding  paragraphs  of  Johnson's 
Preface  to  his  Dictionary  are  historical 


138  DR.   JOHNSON. 

prose ;  and  if  we  are  anxious  to  find  pas- 
sages fit  to  compare  with  them  in  the  mel- 
ancholy roll  of  their  cadences  and  in  their 
grave  sincerity  and  manly  emotion,  we 
must,  I  think,  take  a  flying  jump  from  Dr. 
Johnson  to  Dr.  Newman. 

For  sensible  men  the  world  offers  no 
better  reading  than  the  Lives  of  the  Poets. 
They  afford  an  admirable  example  of  the 
manner  of  man  Johnson  was.  The  subject 
was  suggested  to  him  by  the  booksellers, 
whom  as  a  body  he  never  abused.  Himself 
the  son  of  a  bookseller,  he  respected  their 
calling.  If  they  treated  him  with  civility, 
he  responded  suitably.  If  they  were  rude 
to  him,  he  knocked  them  down.  These 
worthies  chose  their  own  poets.  Johnson 
remained  indifferent.  He  knew  every  body's 
poetry,  and  was  always  ready  to  write  any- 
body's Life.  If  he  knew  the  facts  of  a 
poet's  life  —  and  his  knowledge  was  enor- 
mous on  such  subjects  —  he  found  room 
for  them  ;  if  he  did  not,  he  supplied  their 
place  with  his  own  shrewd  reflections  and 
sombre  philosophy  of  life.  It  thus  comes 
about  that  Johnson  is  every  bit  as  interest- 
ing when  he  is  writing  about  Sprat,  or 


DR.   JOHNSON.  139 

Smith,  or  Fenton,  as  he  is  when  he  has  got 
Milton  or  Gray  in  hand.  He  is  also  much 
less  provoking.  My  own  favourite  Life  is 
that  of  Sir  Richard  Blackmore. 

The  poorer  the  poet  the  kindlier  is  the 
treatment  he  receives.  Johnson  kept  all 
his  rough  words  for  Shakspeare,  Milton, 
and  Gray. 

In  this  trait,  surely  an  amiable  one,  he 
was  much  resembled  by  that  eminent  man 
the  late  Sir  George  Jessel,  whose  civility 
to  a  barrister  was  always  in  inverse  ratio 
to  the  barrister's  practice ;  and  whose 
friendly  zeal  in  helping  young  and  nervous 
practitioners  over  the  stiles  of  legal  diffi- 
culty was  only  equalled  by  the  fiery  enthu- 
siasm with  which  he  thrust  back  the  At- 
torney and  Solicitor-General  and  people  of 
that  sort. 

As  a  political  thinker  Johnson  has  not 
had  justice.  He  has  been  lightly  dismissed 
as  the  last  of  the  old-world  Tories.  He 
was  nothing  of  the  sort.  His  cast  of  po- 
litical thought  is  shared  by  thousands  to 
this  day.  He  represents  that  vast  army  of 
electors  whom  neither  canvasser  nor  cau- 
cus has  ever  yet  cajoled  or  bullied  into  a 


140  DR.   JOHNSON. 

polling  -  booth.  Newspapers  may  scold, 
platforms  may  shake ;  whatever  circulars 
can  do  may  be  done,  all  that  placards  can 
tell  may  be  told  ;  but  the  fact  remains  tha't 
one  -  third  ot  every  constituency  in  the 
realm  shares  Dr.  Johnson's  'narcotic  in- 
difference,' and  stays  away. 

It  is,  of  course,  impossible  to  reconcile 
all  Johnson's  recorded  utterances  with  any 
one  view  of  anything.  When  crossed  in 
conversation  or  goaded  by  folly  he  was, 
like  the  prophet  Habakkuk  (according  to 
Voltaire),  capable  du  tout.  But  his  domi- 
nant tone  about  politics  was  something  of 
this  sort.  Provided  a  man  lived  in  a  state 
which  guaranteed  him  private  liberty  and 
secured  him  public  order,  he  was  very  much 
of  a  knave  or  altogether  a  fool  if  he  troubled 
himself  further.  To  go  to  bed  when  you 
wish,  to  get  up  when  you  like,  to  eat  and 
drink  and  read  what  you  choose,  to  say 
across  your  port  or  your  tea  whatever  oc- 
curs to  you  at  the  moment,  and  to  earn 
your  living  as  best  you  may  —  this  is  what 
Dr.  Johnson  meant  by  private  liberty. 
Fleet  Street  open  day  and  night  —  this  is 
what  he  meant  by  public  order.  Give  a 


DR.   JOHNSON.  141 

sensible  man  these,  and  take  all  the  rest 
the  world  goes  round.  Tyranny  was  a 
bugbear.  Either  the  tyranny  was  beara- 
ble, or  it  was  not.  If  it  was  bearable,  it 
did  not  matter ;  and  as  soon  as  it  became 
unbearable  the  mob  cut  off  the  tyrant's 
head,  and  wise  men  went  home  to  their 
dinner.  To  views  of  this  sort  he  gave  em- 
phatic utterance  on  the  well-known  occa- 
sion when  he  gave  Sir  Adam  Ferguson  a 
bit  of  his  mind.  Sir  Adam  had  innocently 
enough  observed  that  the  Crown  had  too 
much  power.  Thereupon  Johnson  :  — 

'  Sir,  I  perceive  you  are  a  vile  Whig. 
Why  all  this  childish  jealousy  of  the  power 
of  the  Crown  ?  The  Crown  has  not  power 
enough.  When  I  say  that  all  governments 
are  alike,  I  consider  that  in  no  government 
power  can  be  abused  long ;  mankind  will 
not  bear  it.  If  a  sovereign  oppresses  his 
people,  they  will  rise  and  cut  off  his  head. 
There  is  a  remedy  in  human  nature  against 
tyranny  that  will  keep  us  safe  under  every 
form  of  government.' 

This  is  not  and  never  was  the  language 
of  Toryism.  It  is  a  much  more  intellectual 
'  ism.'  It  is  indifferentism.  So,  too,  in 


142  DR.   JOHNSON. 

his  able  pamphlet,  The  False  Alarm,  which 
had  reference  to  Wilkes  and  the  Middlesex 
election,  though  he  no  doubt  attempts  to 
deal  with  the  constitutional  aspect  of  the 
question,  the  real  strength  of  his  case  is  to 
be  found  in  passages  like  the  following  :  — 
'  The  grievance  which  has  produced  all 
this  tempest  of  outrage,  the  oppression  in 
which  all  other  oppressions  are  included, 
the  invasion  which  has  left  us  no  property, 
the  alarm  that  surfers  no  patriot  to  sleep 
in  quiet,  is  comprised  in  a  vote  of  the 
House  of  Commons,  by  which  the  free- 
holders of  Middlesex  are  deprived  of  a 
Briton's  birthright  —  representation  in  Par- 
liament. They  have,  indeed,  received  the 
usual  writ  of  election  ;  but  that  writ,  alas  ! 
wak  malicious  mockery  ;  they  were  insulted 
with  the  form,  but  denied  the  reality,  for 
there  was  one  man  excepted  from  their 
choice.  The  character  of  4^e  man,  thus 
fatally  excepted,  I  have  no  purpose  to  de- 
lineate. Lampoon  itself  would  disdain  to 
speak  ill  of  him  of  whom  no  man  speaks 
well.  Every  lover  of  liberty  stands  doubt- 
ful of  the  fate  of  posterity,  because  the 
chief  county  in  England  cannot  take  its 
representative  from  a  gaol.' 


DR.   JOHNSON.  143 

Temperament  was  of  course  at  the  bot- 
tom of  this  indifference.  Johnson  was  of 
melancholy  humour  and  profoundly  scepti- 
cal. Cynical  he  was  not  —  he  loved  his 
fellow-men  ;  his  days  were  full  of 

'  Little,  nameless,  unremembered  acts 
Of  kindness  and  of  love.' 

But  he  was  as  difficult  to  rouse  to  enthusi- 
asm about  humanity  as  is  Mr.  Justice  Ste- 
phen. He  pitied  the  poor  devils,  but  he 
did  not  believe  in  them.  They  were  neither 
happy  nor  wise,  and  he  saw  no  reason  to 
believe  they  would  ever  become  either. 
*  Leave  me  alone,'  he  cried  to  the  sultry 
mob,  bawling  '  Wilkes  and  Liberty.'  '  I  at 
least  am  not  ashamed  to  own  that  I  care 
for  neither  the  one  nor  the  other.' 

No  man,  however,  resented  more  fiercely 
than  Johnson  any  unnecessary  interference 
with  men  who  were  simply  going  their  own 
way.  The  Highlanders  only  knew  Gaelic, 
yet  political  wiseacres  were  to  be  found 
objecting  to  their  having  the  Bible  in  their 
own  tongue.  Johnson  flew  to  arms :  he 
wrote  one  of  his  monumental  letters  ;  the 
opposition  was  quelled,  and  the  Gael  got 
his  Bible.  So  too  the  wicked  interference 


144  &R-   JOHNSON. 

with  Irish  enterprise,  so  much  in  vogue 
during  the  last  century,  infuriated  him. 
'  Sir,'  he  said  to  Sir  Thomas  Robinson, 
'  you  talk  the  language  of  a  savage.  What, 
sir!  would  you  prevent  any  people  from 
feeding  themselves,  if  by  any  honest  means 
they  can  do  so  ? ' 

Were  Johnson  to  come  to  life  again,  total 
abstainer  as  he  often  was,  he  would,  I  ex- 
pect, denounce  the  principle  involved  in 
'  Local  Option.'  I  am  not  at  all  sure  he 
would  not  borrow  a  guinea  from  a  bystander 
and  become  a  subscriber  to  the  '  Property 
Defence  League ; '  and  though  it  is  notori- 
ous that  he  never  read  any  book  all  through, 
and  never  could  be  got  to  believe  that  any- 
body else  ever  did,  he  would,  I  think,  read 
a  larger  fraction  of  Mr.  Spencer's  pamphlet, 
'  Man  versus  the  State,'  than  of  any  other 
'recent  work  in  circulation.'  The  state  of 
the  Strand,  when  two  vestries  are  at  work 
upon  it,  would,  I  am  sure,  drive  him  into 
open  rebellion. 

As  a  letter-writer  Johnson  has  great 
merits.  Let  no  man  despise  the  epistolary 
art.  It  is  said  to  be  extinct.  I  doubt  it. 
Good  letters  were  always  scarce.  It  does 


DR.   JOHNSON.  145 

not  follow  that,  because  our  grandmothers 
wrote  long  letters,  they  all  wrote  good 
ones^or  that  nobody  nowadays  writes  good 
letters  because  most  people  write  bad  ones. 
Johnson  wrote  letters  in  two  styles.  One 
was  monumental  —  more  suggestive  of  the 
chisel  than  the  pen.  In  the  other  there 
are  traces  of  the  same  style,  but,  like  the 
old  Gothic  architecture,  it  has  grown  do- 
mesticated, and  become  the  fit  vehicle  of 
plain  tidings  of  joy  and  sorrow  —  of  affec- 
tion, wit,  and  fancy.  The  letter  to  Lord 
Chesterfield  is  the  most  celebrated  exam- 
ple of  the  monumental  style.  From  the 
letters  to  Mrs.  Thrale  many  good  examples 
of  the  domesticated  style  might  be  selected. 
One  must  suffice  :  — 

'  Queeney  has  been  a  good  girl,  and  wrote 
me  a  letter.  If  Burney  said  she  would 
write,  she  told  you  a  fib.  She  writes  noth- 
ing to  me.  She  can  write  home  fast  enough. 
I  have  a  good  mind  not  to  tell  her  that  Dr. 
Bernard,  to  whom  I  had  recommended  her 
novel,  speaks  of  it  with  great  commenda- 
tion, and  that  the  copy  which  she  lent  me 
has  been  read  by  Dr.  Lawrence  three  times 
over.  And  yet  what  a  gipsy  it  is.  She  no 


146  DR.   JOHNSON. 

more  minds  me  than  if  I  were  a  Branghton. 
Pray,  speak  to  Queeney  to  write  again.  .  .  . 
Now  you  think  yourself  the  first  writer  in 
the  world  for  a  letter  about  nothing.  Can 
you  write  such  a  letter  as  this  ?  So  mis- 
cellaneous, with  such  noble  disdain  of  reg- 
ularity, like  Shakspeare's  works ;  such 
graceful  negligence  of  transition,  like  the 
ancient  enthusiasts.  The  pure  voice  of  Na- 
ture and  of  Friendship.  Now,  of  whom 
shall  I  proceed  to  speak  ?  of  whom  but 
Mrs.  Montague  ?  Having  mentioned  Shak- 
speare  and  Nature,  does  not  the  name  of 
Montague  force  itself  upon  me  ?  Such 
were  the  transitions  of  the  ancients,  which 
now  seem  abrupt,  because  the  intermediate 
idea  is  lost  to  modern  understandings.' 

But  the  extract  had  better  end,  for  there 
are  (I  fear)  '  modern  understandings '  who 
will  not  perceive  the  '  intermediate  idea ' 
between  Shakspeare  and  Mrs.  Montague, 
and  to  whom  even  the  name  of  Branghton 
will  suggest  no  meaning. 

Johnson's  literary  fame  is,  in  our  judg- 
ment, as  secure  as  his  character.  Like  the 
stone  which  he  placed  over  his  father's 
grave  at  Lichfielcl,  and  which,  it  is  shame- 


DR.  JOHNSON.  147 

ful  to  think,  has  been  removed,  it  is  'too 
massy  and  strong '  to  be  ever  much  affected 
by  the  wind  and  weather  of  our  literary 
atmosphere.  '  Never,'  so  he  wrote  to  Mrs. 
Thrale,  'let  criticisms  operate  upon  your 
face  or  your  mind  ;  it  is  very  rarely  that  an 
author  is  hurt  by  his  critics.  The  blaze  of 
reputation  cannot  be  blown  out ;  but  it 
often  dies  in  the  socket.  From  the  author 
of  Fitzosbornes  Letters  I  cannot  think  my- 
self in  much  danger.  I  met  him  only  once, 
about  thirty  years  ago,  and  in  some  small 
dispute  soon  reduced  him  to  whistle.'  Dr. 
Johnson  is  in  no  danger  from  anybody. 
None  but  Gargantua  could  blow  him  out, 
and  he  still  burns  brightly  in  his  socket. 

How  long  this  may  continue  who  can 
say  ?  It  is  a  far  cry  to  1985.  Science 
may  by  that  time  have  squeezed  out  liter- 
ature, and  the  author  of  the  Lives  of  the 
Poets  may  be  dimly  remembered  as  an  odd 
fellow  who  lived  in  the  Dark  Ages,  and 
had  a  very  creditable  fancy  for  making 
chemical  experiments.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  Spiritualists  may  be  in  possession,  in 
which  case  the  Cock  Lane  Ghost  will 
occupy  more  of  public  attention  than 


148  DR.   JOHNSON. 

Boswell's  hero,  who  will,  perhaps,  be  rep- 
robated as  the  profane  utterer  of  these 
idle  words  :  '  Suppose  I  know  a  man  to  be 
so  lame  that  he  is  absolutely  incapable  to 
move  himself,  and  I  find  him  in  a  different 
room  from  that  in  which  I  left  him,  shall  I 
puzzle  myself  with  idle  conjectures,  that 
perhaps  his  nerves  have  by  some  unknown 
change  all  at  once  become  effective  ?  No, 
sir,  it  is  clear  how  he  got  into  a  different 
room — he  was  carried? 

We  here  part  company  with  Johnson, 
bidding  him  a  most  affectionate  farewell, 
and  leaving  him  in  undisturbed  possession 
of  both  place  and  power.  His  character 
will  bear  investigation  and  some  of  his 
books  perusal.  The  latter,  indeed,  may  be 
submitted  to  his  own  test,  and  there  is  no 
truer  one.  A  book,  he  wrote,  should  help 
us  either  to  enjoy  life  or  to  endure  it.  His 
frequently  do  both. 


EDMUND   BURKE. 

A  Lecture  delivered  before  the  Edinburgh  Phil- 
osophical Society. 

MR.  JOHN  MORLEY,  who  amongst  other 
things  has  written  two  admirable  books 
about  Edmund  Burke,  is  to  be  found  in  the 
Preface  to  the  second  of  them  apologising 
for  having  introduced  into  the  body  of  the 
work  extracts  from  his  former  volume  — 
conduct  which  he  seeks  to  justify  by  quot- 
ing from  the  Greek  (always  a  desirable 
thing  to  do  when  in  a  difficulty),  to  prove 
that,  though  you  may  say  what  you  have 
to  say  well  once,  you  cannot  so  say  it 
twice. 

A  difficulty  somewhat  of  the  same  kind 
cannot  fail  to  be  felt  by  every  one  who 
takes  upon  himself  to  write  on  Burke  ;  for 
however  innocent  a  man's  own  past  life 
may  be  of  any  public  references  to  the 


I5O  EDMUND  BURKE. 

subject,  the  very  many  good  things  other 
men  have  said  about  it  must  seriously  in- 
terfere with  true  liberty  of  treatment. 

Hardly  any  man,  and  certainly  no  politi- 
cian, has  been  so  bepraised  as  Burke, 
whose  very  name,  suggesting,  as  it  does, 
splendour  of  diction,  has  tempted  those  who 
would  praise  him  to  do  so  in  a  highly  dec- 
orated style,  and  it  would  have  been  easy 
work  to  have  brought  together  a  sufficient 
number  of  animated  passages  from  the 
works  of  well-known  writers  all  dedicated 
to  the  greater  glory  of  Edmund  Burke,  and 
then  to  have  tagged  on  half-a-dozen  speci- 
mens of  his  own  resplendent  rhetoric,  and 
so  to  have  come  to  an  apparently  natu- 
ral and  long  desired  conclusion  without  ex- 
citing any  more  than  the  usual  post  lectorial 
grumble. 

This  course,  however,  not  recommend- 
ing itself,  some  other  method  had  to  be 
discovered.  Happily,  it  is  out  of  the  ques- 
tion within  present  limits  to  give  any  proper 
summary  of  Burke's  public  life.  This  great 
man  was  not,  like  some  modern  politicians, 
a  specialist,  confining  his  activities  within 
the  prospectus  of  an  association  ;  nor  was 


EDMUND  BURKE.  151 

he,  like  some  others,  a  thing  of  shreds  and 
patches,  busily  employed  to-day  picking  up 
the  facts  with  which  he  will  overwhelm  his 
opponents  on  the  morrow  ;  but  was.  one 
ever  ready  to  engage  with  all  comers  on  all 
subjects  from  out  the  stores  of  his  accumu- 
lated knowledge.  Even  were  we  to  con- 
fine ourselves  to  those  questions  only  which 
engaged  Burke's  most  powerful  attention, 
enlisted  his  most  active  sympathy,  elicited 
his  most  bewitching  rhetoric,  we  should 
still  find  ourselves  called  upon  to  grapple 
with  problems  as  vast  and  varied  as  Eco- 
nomic Reform,  the  Status  of  our  Colo- 
nies, our  Empire  in  India,  our  relations 
with  Ireland  both  in  respect  to  her  trade 
and  her  prevalent  religion ;  and  then, 
blurring  the  picture,  as  some  may  think 
—  certainly  rendering  it  Titanesque  and 
gloomy — we  have  the  spectacle  of  Burke 
in  his  old  age,  like  another  Laocoon,  writh- 
ing and  wrestling  with  the  French  Revolu- 
tion ;  and  it  may  serve  to  give  us  some 
dim  notion  of  how  great  a  man  Burke 
was,  of  how  affluent  a  mind,  of  how  po- 
tent an  imagination,  of  how  resistless  an 
energy,  that  even  when  his  sole  unassisted 


I$2  EDMUND  BURKE. 

name  is  pitted  against  the  outcome  of  cen- 
turies, and  we  say  Burke  and ,  the  French 
Revolution,  we  are  not  overwhelmed  by  any 
sense  of  obvious  absurdity  or  incongruity. 

What  I  propose  to  do  is  merely  to  con- 
sider a  little  Burke's  life  prior  to  his  ob- 
taining a  seat  in  Parliament,  and  then  to 
refer  to  any  circumstances  which  may  help 
us  to  account  for  the  fact  that  this  truly 
extraordinary  man,  whose  intellectual  re- 
sources beggar  the  imagination,  and  who 
devoted  himself  to  politics  with  all  the 
forces  of  his  nature,  never  so  much  as  at- 
tained to  a  seat  in  the  Cabinet  —  a  feat  one 
has  known  to  be  accomplished  by  persons 
of  no  proved  intellectual  agility.  Having 
done  this,  I  shall  then,  bearing  in  mind  the 
aphorism  of  Lord  Beaconsfield,  that  it  is 
always  better  to  be  impudent  than  servile, 
essay  an  analysis  of  the  essential  elements 
of  Burke's  character. 

The  first  great  fact  to  remember  is,  that 
the  Edmund  Burke  we  are  all  agreed  in  re- 
garding as  one  of  the  proudest  memories 
of  the  House  of  Commons  was  an  Irish- 
man. When  we  are  in  our  next  fit  of  po- 
litical depression  about  that  island,  and  are 


EDMUND  BURKE.  153 

about  piously  to  wish,  as  the  poet  Spenser 
tells  us  men  were  wishing  even  in  his  time, 
that  it  were  not  adjacent,  let  us  do  a  little 
national  stocktaking,  and  calculate  profits 
as  well  as  losses.  Burke  was  not  only  an 
Irishman,  but  a  typical  one  —  of  the  very 
kind  many  Englishmen,  and  even  possibly 
some  Scotchmen,  make  a  point  of  dislik- 
ing. I  do  not  say  he  was  an  aboriginal 
Irishman,  but  his  ancestors  are  said  to 
have  settled  in  the  county  of  Galway,  un- 
der Strongbow,  in  King  Henry  the  Sec- 
ond's time,  when  Ireland  was  first  con- 
quered and  our  troubles  began.  This,  at 
all  events,  is  a  better  Irish  pedigree  than 
Mr.  Parnell's. 

Skipping  six  centuries,  we  find  Burke's 
father  an  attorney  in  Dublin  —  which 
somehow  sounds  a  very  Irish  thing  to  be 
—  who  in  1725  married  a  Miss  Nagle,  and 
had  fifteen  children.  The  marriage  of 
Burke's  parents  was  of  the  kind  called 
mixed  —  a  term  which  doubtless  admits  of 
wide  application,  but  when  employed  tech- 
nically signifies  that  the  religious  faith  of 
the  spouses  was  different  ;  one,  the  father, 
being  a  Protestant,  and  the  lady  an  adher- 


154  EDMUND  BURKE. 

ent  to  what  used  to  be  pleasantly  called 
the  '  old  religion.'  The  severer  spirit  now 
dominating  Catholic  councils  has  con- 
demned these  marriages,  on  the  score  of 
their  bad  theology  and  their  lax  morality  ; 
but  the  practical  politician,  who  is  not 
usually  much  of  a  theologian  —  though 
Lord  Melbourne  and  Mr.  Gladstone  are 
distinguished  exceptions  —  and  whose 
moral  conscience  is  apt  to  be  robust  (and 
here  I  believe  there  are  no  exceptions), 
cannot  but  regret  that  so  good  an  oppor- 
tunity of  lubricating  religious  differences 
with  the  sweet  oil  of  the  domestic  affec- 
tions should  be  lost  to  us  in  these  days 
of  bitterness  and  dissension.  Burke  was 
brought  up  in  the  Protestant  faith  of  his 
father,  and  was  never  in  any  real  danger  of 
deviating  from  it ;  but  I  cannot  doubt  that 
his  regard  for  his  Catholic  fellow-subjects, 
his  fierce  repudiation  of  the  infamies  of  the 
Penal  Code  —  whose  horrors  he  did  some- 
thing to  mitigate  —  his  respect  for  an- 
tiquity, and  his  historic  sense,  were  all 
quickened  by  the  fact  that  a  tenderly 
loved  and  loving  mother  belonged  through 
life  and  in  death  to  an  ancient  and  an  out- 
raged faith. 


EDMUND  BURKE.  155 

The  great  majority  of  Burke's  brothers 
and  sisters,  like  those  of  Laurence  Sterne, 
were  '  not  made  to  live  ; '  and  out  of  the 
fifteen  but  three,  beside  himself,  attained 
maturity.  These  were  his  eldest  brother, 
Garrett,  on  whose  death  Edmund  suc- 
ceeded to  the  patrimonial  Irish  estate, 
which  he  sold  ;  his  younger  brother,  Rich- 
ard, a  highly  speculative  gentleman,  who 
always  lost  ;  and  his  sister,  Juliana,  who 
married  a  Mr.  French,  and  was,  as  became 
her  mother's  daughter,  a  rigid  Roman 
Catholic  —  who,  so  we  read,  was  accus- 
tomed every  Christmas  Day  to  invite  to 
the  Hall  the  maimed,  the  aged,  and  dis- 
tressed of  her  vicinity  to  a  plentiful  repast, 
during  which  she  waited  upon  them  as  a 
servant.  A  sister  like  this  never  did  any 
man  any  serious  harm. 

Edmund  Burke  was  born  in  1729,  in 
Dublin,  and  was  taught  his  rudiments  in 
the  country  —  first  by  a  Mr.  O'Halloran, 
and  afterwards  by  a  Mr.  FitzGerald,  village 
pedagogues  both,  who  at  all  events  suc- 
ceeded in  giving  their  charge  a  brogue 
which  death  alone  could  silence.  Burke 
passed  from  their  hands  to  an  academy  at 


156  EDMUND  BURKE. 

Ballitore,  kept  by  a  Quaker,  from  whence 
he  proceeded  to  Trinity  College,  Dublin. 
He  was  thus  not  only  Irish  born,  but  Irish 
bred.  His  intellectual  habit  of  mind  ex- 
hibited itself  early.  He  belonged  to  the 
happy  family  of  omnivorous  readers,  and, 
in  the  language  of  his  latest  schoolmaster, 
he  went  to  college  with  a  larger  miscella- 
neous stock  of  reading  than  was  usual  with 
one  of  his  years  ;  which,  being  interpreted 
out  of  pedagogic  into^>lain  English,  means 
that  '  our  good  Edmund  '  was  an  enormous 
devourer  of  poetry  and  novels,  and  so  he 
remained  to  the  end  of  his  days.  That  he 
always  preferred  Fielding  to  Richardson  is 
satisfactory,  since  it  pairs  him  off  nicely 
with  Dr.  Johnson,  whose  preference  was 
the  other  way,  and  so  helps  to  keep  an  in- 
teresting question  wide  open.  His  passion 
for  the  poetry  of  Virgil  is  significant.  His 
early  devotion  to  Edward  Young,  the 
grandiose  author  of  the  Night  Thoughts,  is 
not  to  be  wondered  at ;  though  the  inspi- 
ration of  the  youthful  Burke,  either  as  poet 
or  critic,  may  be  questioned,  when  we  find 
him  rapturously  scribbling  in  the  margin 
of  his  copy  :  — 


EDMUND  BURKE. 

'  Jove  claimed  the  verse  old  Homer  sung, 
But  God  Himself  inspired  Dr.  Young.' 

But  a  boy's  enthusiasm  for  a  favourite  poet 
is  a  thing  to  rejoice  over.  The  years  that 
bring  the  philosophic  mind  will  not  bring 

—  they  must  find  —  enthusiasm. 

In  1750,  Burke  (being  then  twenty-one) 
came  for  the  first  time  to  London,  to  do 
what  so  many  of  his  lively  young  country- 
men are  still  doing  —  though  they  are  be- 
ginning to  make  a  grievance  even  of  that 

—  eat  his  dinners  at  the  Middle  Temple, 
and  so  qualify  himself  for  the  Bar.     Cer- 
tainly that  student  was  in  luck  who  found 
himself  in  the  same  mess  with  Burke ;  and 
yet  so  stupid  are  men  —  so  prone  to  rest 
with  their  full  weight  on  the  immaterial 
and  slide  over  the  essential — that  had  that 
good  fortune  been  ours  we  should  proba- 
bly have  been  more  taken  up  with  Burke's 
brogue  than  with  his  brains.     Burke  came 
to  London  with  a  cultivated  curiosity,  and 
in  no  spirit  of  desperate  determination  to 
make  his  fortune.     That  the  study  of  the 
law  interested  him  cannot  be  doubted,  for 
everything  interested  him,  particularly  the 
stage.    Like  the  sensible  Irishman  he  was, 


158  EDMUND  BURKE. 

he  lost  his  heart  to  Peg  Woffington  on  the 
first  opportunity.  He  was  fond  of  roaming 
about  the  country,  during,  it  is  to  be  hoped, 
vacation-time  only,  and  is  to  be  found  writ- 
ing the  most  cheerful  letters  to  his  friends 
in  Ireland  (all  of  whom  are  persuaded  that 
he  is  going  some  day  to  be  somebody, 
though  sorely  puzzled  to  surmise  what 
thing  or  when,  so  pleasantly  does  he  take 
life),  from  all  sorts  of  out-of-the-way  coun- 
try places,  where  he  lodges  with  quaint  old 
landladies  who  wonder  maternally  why  he 
never  gets  drunk,  and  generally  mistake 
him  for  an  author  until  he  pays  his  bill. 
When  in  town  he  frequented  debating  so- 
cieties in  Fleet  Street  and  Covent  Garden, 
and  made  his  first  speeches ;  for  which  pur- 
pose he  would,  unlike  some  debaters,  de- 
vote studious  hours  to  getting  up  the  sub- 
jects to  be  discussed.  There  is  good  reason 
to  believe  that  it  was  in  this  manner  his 
attention  was  first  directed  to  India.  He 
was  at  all  times  a  great  talker,  and,  Dr. 
Johnson's  dictum  notwithstanding,  a  good 
listener.  He  was  endlessly  interested  in 
everything  —  in  the  state  of  the  crops,  in 
the  last  play,  in  the  details  of  all  trades, 


EDMUND  BURKE.  159 

the  rhythm  of  all  poems,  the  plots  of  all 
novels,  and  indeed  in  the  course  of  every 
manufacture.  And  so  for  six  years  he  went 
-up  and  down,  to  and  fro,  gathering  infor- 
mation, imparting  knowledge,  and  prepar- 
ing himself,  though  he  knew  not  for  what. 
The  attorney  in  Dublin  grew  anxious,  and 
searched  for  precedents  of  a  son  behaving 
like  his,  and  rising  to  ejninence.  Had  his 
son  got  the  legal  mind  ?  —  which,  accord- 
ing to  a  keen  observer,  chiefly  displays  it- 
self by  illustrating  the  obvious,  explaining 
the  evident,  and  expatiating  on  ttte  com- 
monplace. Edmund's  powers  of  illustra- 
tion, explanation,  and  expatiation  could 
not  indeed  be  questioned  ;  but  then  the 
subjects  selected  for  the  exhibition  of 
those  powers  were  very  far  indeed  from 
being  obvious,  evident,  or  commonplace ; 
and  the  attorney's  heart  grew  heavy  within 
him.  The  paternal  displeasure  was  signi- 
fied in  the  usual  manner  —  the  supplies 
were  cut  off.  Edmund  Burke,  however, 
was  no  ordinary  prodigal,  arid  his  reply  to 
his  father's  expostulations  took  the  unex- 
pected and  unprecedented  shape  of  a  copy 
of  a  second  and  enlarged  edition  of  his 


l6o  EDAIUND  BURKE. 

treatise  on  the  Sublime  and  Beautiful, 
which  he  had  published  in  1756  at  the 
price  of  three  shillings.  Burke's  father 
promptly  sent  the  author  a  bank-bill  for 
;£ioo,  —  conduct  on  his  part  which,  con- 
sidering he  had  sent  his  son  to  London 
and  maintained  him  there  for  six  years  to 
study  law,  was,  in  my  judgment,  both  sub- 
lime and  beautiful.  In  the  same  year  Burke 
published  another  pamphlet  —  a  one-and- 
sixpenny  affair  —  written  ironically,  in  the 
style  of  Lord  Bolingbroke,  and  called  A 
Vindication  of  Natural  Society;  or,  a  View 
of  the  Miseries  and  Evils  arising  to  Man- 
kind from  Every  Species  of  Civil  Society. 
Irony  is  a  dangerous  weapon  for  a  public 
man  to  have  ever  employed,  and  in  after- 
life Burke  had  frequently  to  explain  that 
he  was  not  serious.  On  these  two  pam- 
phlets' airy  pinions  Burke  floated  into  the 
harbour  of  literary  fame.  No  less  a  man 
than  the  great  David  Hume  referred  to 
him,  in  a  letter  to  the  hardly  less  great 
Adam  Smith,  as  an  Irish  gentleman  who 
had  written  a  '  very  pretty  treatise  on  the 
Sublime.'  After  these  efforts,  Burke,  as 
became  an  established  wit,  went  to  Bath 


EDMUND  BURKE.  l6l 

to  recruit,  and  there,  fitly  enough,  fell  in 
love.  The  lady  was  Miss  Jane  Mary  Nu- 
gent, the  daughter  of  a  celebrated  Bath 
physician ;  and  it  is  pleasant  to  be  able 
to  say  of  the  marriage  that  was  shortly 
solemnised  between  the  young  couple,  that 
it  was  a  happy  one,  and  then  to  go  on  our 
way,  leaving  them  —  where  man  and  wife 
ought  to  be  left  —  alone.  Oddly  enough, 
Burke's  wife  was  also  the  offspring  of  a 
'mixed  marriage' — only  in  her  case  it  was 
the  father  who  was  the  Catholic  ;  conse- 
quently both  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Edmund  Burke 
were  of  the  same  way  of  thinking,  but  each 
had  a  parent  of  the  other  way.  Although 
getting  married  is  no  part  of  the  curricu- 
lum of  a  law  student,  Burke's  father  seems 
to  have  come  to  the  conclusion  that  after 
all  it  was  a  greater  distinction  for  an  attor- 
ney in  Dublin  to  have  a  son  living  amongst 
the  wits  in  London,  and  discoursing  famil- 
iarly on  the  '  Sublime  and  Beautiful,'  than 
one  prosecuting  some  poor  countryman, 
with  a  brogue  as  rich  as  his  own,  for  steal- 
ing a  pair  of  breeches  ;  for  we  find  him 
generously  allowing  the  young  couple  ^200 
a  year,  which  no  doubt  went  some  way  to- 


1 62  EDMUND  BURKE. 

wards  maintaining  them.  Burke,  who  was 
now  in  his  twenty-eighth  year,  seems  to 
have  given  up  all  notion  of  the  law.  In 
1758  he  wrote  for  Dodsley  the  first  volume 
of  the  Annual  Register,  a  melancholy  series 
which  continues  to  this  day.  For  doing 
this  he  got  ^100.  Burke  was  by  this  time 
a  well-known  figure  in  London  literary  so- 
ciety, and  was  busy  making  for  himself  a 
huge  private  reputation.  The  Christmas 
Day  of  1758  witnessed  a  singular  scene  at 
the  dinner  table  of  David  Garrick.  Dr. 
Johnson,  then  in  the  full  vigour  of  his 
mind,  and  with  the  all-dreaded  weapons  of 
his  dialectics  kept  burnished  by  daily  use, 
was  flatly  contradicted  by  a  fellow-guest 
some  twenty  years  his  junior,  and,  what  is 
more,  submitted  to  it  without  a  murmur. 
One  of  the  diners,  Arthur  Murphy,  was  so 
struck  by  this  occurrence,  unique  in  his 
long  experience  of  the  Doctor,  that  on 
returning  home  he  recorded  the  fact  in  his 
journal,  but  ventured  no  explanation  of  it. 
It  can  only  be  accounted  for  —  so  at  least 
I  venture  to  think  —  by  the  combined  ef- 
fect of  four  wholly  independent  circum- 
stances :  First,  the  day  was  Christmas 


EDMUND  BURKE.  163 

Day,  a  day  of  peace  and  goodwill,  and  our 
beloved  Doctor  was  amongst  the  sincerest, 
though  most  argumentative  of  Christians, 
and  a  great  observer  of  days.  Second,  the 
house  was  David  Garrick's,  and  conse- 
quently we  may  be  certain  that  the  din- 
ner had  been  a  superlatively  good  one  ; 
and  has  not  Boswell  placed  on  record 
Johnson's  opinion  of  the  man  who  pro- 
fessed to  be  indifferent  about  his  dinner? 
Third,  the  subject  under  discussion  was 
India,  about  which  Johnson  knew  he  knew 
next  to  nothing.  And  four  t/t,  the  offender 
was  Edmund  Burke,  whom  Johnson  loved 
from  the  first  day  he  set  eyes  upon  him 
to  their  last  sad  parting  by  the  waters  of 
death. 

In  1761  that  shrewd  old  gossip,  Horace 
Walpole,  met  Burke  for  the  first  time  at 
dinner,  and  remarks  of  him  in  a  letter  to 
George  Montague:  — 

'  I  dined  at  Hamilton's  yesterday  ;  there 
were  Garrick,  and  young  Mr.  Burke,  who 
wrote  a  book  in  the  style  of  Lord  Boling- 
broke,  that  was  much  admired.  He  is  a 
sensible  man,  but  has  not  worn  off  his  au- 
thorism  yet,  and  thinks  there  is  nothing 


1 64  EDMUND  BURKE. 

so  charming  as  writers,  and  to  be  one.  He 
will  know  better  one  of  these  days/ 

But  great  as  were  Burke's  literary  pow- 
ers, and  passionate  as  was  his  fondness  for 
letters  and  for  literary  society,  he  never 
seems  to  have  felt  that  the  main  burden  of 
his  life  lay  in  that  direction.  He  looked 
to  the  public  service,  and  this  though  he 
always  believed  that  the  pen  of  a  great 
writer  was  a  more  powerful  and  glorious 
weapon  than  any  to  be  found  in  the  ar- 
moury of  politics.  This  faith  of  his  comes 
out  sometimes  queerly  enough.  For  exam- 
ple, when  Dr.  Robertson  in  1777  sent  Burke 
his  cheerful  History  rf  America  in  quarto 
volumes,  Burke,  in  the  most  perfect  good 
faith,  closes  a  long  letter  of  thanks  thus :  — 

'You  will  smile  when  I  send  you  a  tri- 
fling temporary  production  made  for  the 
occasion  of  the  day,  and  to  perish  with  it, 
in  return  for  your  immortal  work.' 

I  have  no  desire,  least  of  all  in  Edin- 
burgh, to  say  anything  disrespectful  of 
Principal  Robertson ;  but  still,  when  we 
remember  that  the  temporary  production 
he  got  in  exchange  for  his  History  of 
America  was  Burke's  immortal  letter  to 


EDMUND  BURKE.  165 

the  Sheriffs  of  Bristol  on  the  American 
War,  we  must,  I  think,  be  forced  to  admit 
that,  as  so  often  happens  when  a  Scotch- 
man and  an  Irishman  do  business  together, 
the  former  got  the  better  of  the  bargain. 

Burke's  first  public  employment  was  of 
a  humble  character,  and  might  well  have 
been  passed  over  in  a  sentence,  had  it  not 
terminated  in  a  most  delightful  quarrel,  in 
which  Burke  conducted  himself  like  an 
Irishman  of  genius.  Some  time  in  1759 
he  became  acquainted  with  William  Gerard 
Hamilton,  commonly  called  '  Single-speech 
Hamilton,'  on  account  of  the  celebrity  he 
gained  from  his  first  speech  in  Parliament, 
and  the  steady  way  in  which  his  oratorical 
reputation  went  on  waning  ever  after.  In 
1761  this  gentleman  went  over  to  Ireland 
as  Chief  Secretary,  and  Burke  accompanied 
him  as  the  Secretary's  secretary,  or,  in  the 
unlicensed  speech  of  Dublin,  as  Hamilton's 
jackal.  This  arrangement  was  eminently 
satisfactory  to  Hamilton,  who  found,  as 
generations  of  men  have  found  after  him, 
Burke's  brains  very  useful,  and  he  deter- 
mined to  borrow  them  for  the  period  of 
their  joint  lives.  Animated  by  this  desire, 


1 66  EDMUND  BURKE. 

in  itself  praiseworthy,  he  busied  himself  in 
procuring  for  Burke  a  pension  of  ^300  a 
year  on  the  Irish  establishment,  and  then 
the  simple  'Single -speech'  thought  the 
transaction  closed.  He  had  bought  his 
poor  man  of  genius,  and  paid  for  him  on 
the  nail  with  other  people's  money.  Noth- 
ing remained  but  for  Burke  to  draw  his 
pension  and  devote  the  rest  of  his  life  to 
maintaining  Hamilton's  reputation.  There 
is  nothing  at  all  unusual  in  this,  and  I 
have  no  doubt  Burke  would  have  stuck  to 
his  bargain,  had  not  Hamilton  conceived 
the  fatal  idea  that  Burke's  brains  were 
exclusively  his  (Hamilton's).  Then  the  sit- 
uation became  one  of  risk  and  apparent 
danger. 

Burke's  imagination  began  playing  round 
the  subject  :  he  saw  himself  a  slave, 
blotted  out  of  existence  —  mere  fuel  for 
Hamilton's  flame.  In  a  week  he  was  in  a 
towering  passion.  Few  men  can  afford  to 
be  angry.  It  is  a  run  upon  their  intel- 
lectual resources  they  cannot  meet.  But 
Burke's  treasury  could  well  afford  the  lux- 
ury ;  and  his  letters  to  Hamilton  make  de- 
lightful reading  to  those  who,  like  myself, 


EDMUND  BURKE.  167 

dearly  love  a  dispute  when  conducted  ac- 
cording to  the  rules  of  the  game  by  men  of 
great  intellectual  wealth.  Hamilton  de- 
molished and  reduced  to  stony  silence, 
Burke  sat  down  again  and  wrote  long  let- 
ters to  all  his  friends,  telling  them  the 
whole  story  from  beginning  to  end.  I 
must  be  allowed  a  quotation  from  one  of 
these  letters,  for  this  really  is  not  so  friv- 
olous a  matter  as  I  am  afraid  I  have  made 
it  appear  —  a  quotation  of  which  this  much 
may  be  said,  that  nothing  more  delightfully 
Burkean  is  to  be  found  anywhere  :  — 

'  MY  DEAR  MASON,  — 

'  I  am  hardly  able  to  tell  you  how 
much  satisfaction  I  had  in  your  letter. 
Your  approbation  of  my  conduct  makes 
me  believe  much  the  better  of  you  and  my- 
self ;  and  I  assure  you  that  that  approba- 
tion came  to  me  very  seasonably.  Such 
proofs  of  a  warm,  sincere,  and  disinter- 
ested friendship  were  not  wholly  unneces- 
sary to  my  support  at  a  time  when  I  ef- 
perienced  such  bitter  effects  of  the  perfidy 
and  ingratitude  of  much  longer  and  much 
closer  connections.  The  way  in  which  you 


1 68  EDMUND  BURKE. 

take  up  my  affairs  binds  me  to  you  in  a 
manner  I  cannot  express  ;  for  to  tell  you 
the  truth,  I  never  can  (knowing  as  I  do  the 
principles  upon  which  I  always  endeavour 
to  act)  submit  to  any  sort  of  compromise 
of  my  character  ;  and  I  shall  never,  there- 
fore, look  upon  those  who,  after  hearing 
the  whole  story,  do  not  think  me  perfectly 
in  the  right,  and  do  not  consider  Hamilton 
an  infamous  scoundrel,  to  be  in  the  small- 
est degree  my  friends,  or  even  to  be  per- 
sons for  whom  I  am  bound  to  have  the 
slightest  esteem,  as  fair  and  just  estima- 
tors of  the  characters  and  conduct  of  men. 
Situated  as  I  am,  and  feeling  as  I  do,  I 
should  be  just  as  well  pleased  that  they 
totally  condemned  me,  as  that  they  should 
say  there  were  faults  on  both  sides,  or  that 
it  was  a  disputable  case,  as  I  hear  is  (I 
cannot  forbear  saying)  the  affected  lan- 
guage of  some  persons.  .  .  .  You  cannot 
avoid  remarking,  my  dear  Mason,  and  I 
hope  not  without  some  indignation,  the 
unparalleled  singularity  of  my  situation. 
Was  ever  a  man  before  me  expected  to 
enter  into  formal,  direct,  and  undisguised 
slavery  ?  Did  ever  man  before  him  confess 


EDMUND  BURKE.  169 

an  attempt  to  decoy  a  man  into  such  an 
alleged  contract,  not  to  say  anything  of  the 
impudence  of  regularly  pleading  it  ?  If 
such  an  attempt  be  wicked  and  unlawful 
(and  I  am  sure  no  one  ever  doubted  it),  I 
have  only  to  confess  his  charge,  and  to  ad- 
mit myself  his  dupe,  to  make  him  pass,  on 
his  own  showing,  for  the  most  consummate 
villain  that  ever  lived.  The  only  differ- 
ence between  us  is,  not  whether  he  is  not 
a  rogue  — for  he  not  only  admits  but  pleads 
the  facts  that  demonstrate  him  to  be  so ; 
but  only  whether  I  was  such  a  fool  as  to 
sell  myself  absolutely  for  a  consideration 
which,  so  far  from  being  adequate,  if  any 
such  could  be  adequate,  is  not  even  so 
much  as  certain.  Not  to  value  myself  as  a 
gentleman,  a  free  man,  a  man  of  education, 
and  one  pretending  to  literature  ;  is  there 
any  situation  in  life  so  low,  or  even  so 
criminal,  that  can  subject  a  man  to  the  pos- 
sibility of  such  an  engagement  ?  Would 
you  dare  attempt  to  bind  your  footman  to 
such  terms  ?  Will  the  law  surfer  a  felon 
sent  to  the  plantations  to  bind  himself  for 
his  life,  and  to  renounce  all  possibility 
either  of  elevation  or  quiet  ?  And  am  I  to 


I/O  EDMUND  BURKE. 

defend  myself  for  not  doing  what  no  man 
is  suffered  to  do,  and  what  it  would  be 
criminal  in  any  man  to  submit  to  ?  You 
will  excuse  me  for  this  heat.' 

I  not  only  excuse  Burke  for  his  heat,  but 
love  him  for  letting  me  warm  my  hands  at 
it  after  a  lapse  of  a  hundred  and  twenty 
years. 

Burke  was  more  fortunate  in  his  second 
master,  for  in  1765,  being  then  thirty-six 
years  of  age,  he  became  private  secretary 
to  the  new  Prime  Minister,  the  Marquis  of 
Rockingham  ;  was  by  the  interest  of  Lord 
Verney  returned  to  Parliament  for  Wen- 
dover,  in  Bucks ;  and  on  January  2/th, 
1766,  his  voice,  was  first  heard  in  the 
House  of  Commons. 

The  Rockingham  Ministry  deserves  well 
of  the  historian,  and  on  the  whole  has  re- 
ceived its  deserts.  Lord  Rockingham,  the 
Duke  of  Richmond,  Lord  John  Cavendish, 
Mr.  Dowdeswell,  and  the  rest  of  them, 
were  good  men  and  true,  judged  by  an 
ordinary  standard  ;  and  when  contrasted 
with  most  of  their  political  competitors, 
they  almost  approach  the  ranks  of  saints 
and  angels.  However,  after  a  year  and 


EDMUND  BURKE.  17 1 

twenty  days,  his  Majesty  King  George  the 
Third  managed  to  get  rid  of  them,  and  to 
keep  them  at  bay  for  fifteen  years.  But 
their  first  term  of  office,  though  short, 
lasted  long  enough  to  establish  a  friend- 
ship of  no  ordinary  powers  of  endurance 
between  the  chief  members  of  the  party 
and  the  Prime  Minister's  private  secretary, 
who  was  at  first,  so  ran  the  report,  sup- 
posed to  be  a  wild  Irishman,  whose  real 
name  was  O'Bourke,  and  whose  brogue 
seemed  to  require  the  allegation  that  its 
owner  was  a  popish  emissary.  It  is  satis- 
factory to  notice  how  from  the  very  first 
Burke's  intellectual  pre-eminence,  charac- 
ter, and  aims  were  clearly  admitted  and 
most  cheerfully  recognised  by  his  political 
and  social  superiors  ;  and  in  the  long  cor- 
respondence in  which  he  engaged  with 
most  of  them,  there  is  not  a  trace  to  be 
found,  on  one  side  or  the  other,  of  anything 
approaching  to  either  patronage  or  ser- 
vility. Burke  advises  them,  exhorts  them, 
expostulates  with  them,  condemns  their 
aristocratic  languor,  fans  their  feeble  flames, 
drafts  their  motions,  dictates  their  protests, 
visits  their  houses,  and  generally  supplies 


1/2  EDMUND  BURKE. 

them  with  facts,  figures,  poetry,  and  ro- 
mance. To  all  this  they  submit  with  much 
humility.  The  Duke  of  Richmond  once 
indeed  ventured  to  hint  to  Burke,  with  ex- 
ceeding delicacy,  that  he  (the  Duke)  had 
a  small  private  estate  to  attend  to  as 
well  as  public  affairs  ;  but  the  validity  of 
the  excuse  was  not  admitted.  The  part 
Burke  played  for  the  next  fifteen  years 
with  relation  to  the  Rockingham  party  re- 
minds me  of  the  functions  I  have  observed 
performed  in  lazy  families  by  a  soberly 
clad  and  eminently  respectable  person  who 
pays  them  domiciliary  visits,  and,  having 
admission  everywhere,  goes  about  mysteri- 
ously from  room  to  room,  winding  up  all 
the  clocks.  This  is  what  Burke  did  for 
the  Rockingham  party  —  he  kept  it  going. 
But  fortunately  for  us,  Burke  was  not 
content  with  private  adjuration,  or  even 
public  speech.  His  literary  instincts,  his 
dominating  desire  to  persuade  everybody 
that  he,  Edmund  Burke,  was  absolutely  in 
the  right,  and  every  one  of  his  opponents 
hopelessly  wrong,  made  him  turn  to  the 
pamphlet  as  a  propaganda,  and  in  his 
hands 


EDMUND  BURKE.  173 

'The  thing  became  a  trumpet,  whence  he  blew 
Soul-animating  strains.' 

So  accustomed  are  we  to  regard  Burke's 
pamphlets  as  specimens  of  our  noblest  lit- 
erature, and  to  see  them  printed  in  com- 
fortable volumes,  that  we  are  apt  to  forget 
that  in  their  origin  they  were  but  the  chil- 
dren of  the  pavement,  the  publications  of 
the  hour.  If,  however,  you  ever  visit  any 
old  public  library,  and  grope  about  a  little, 
you  are  likely  enough  to  find  a  shelf  holding 
some  twenty-five  or  thirty  musty,  ugly  lit- 
tle books,  usually  lettered  '  Burke,'  and  on 
opening  any  of  them  you  will  come  across 
one  of  Burke's  pamphlets  as  originally  is- 
sued, bound  up  with  the  replies  and  counter- 
pamphlets  it  occasioned.  I  have  frequent- 
ly tried,  but  always  in  vain,  to  read  these 
replies,  which  are  pretentious  enough  — 
usually  the  works  of  deans,  members  of 
Parliament,  and  other  dignitaries  of  the 
class  Carlyle  used  compendiously  to  de- 
scribe as  '  shovel-hatted '  —  and  each  of 
whom  was  as  much  entitled  to  publish 
pamphlets  as  Burke  himself.  There  are 
some  things  it  is  very  easy  to  do,  and  to 
write  a  pamphlet  is  one  of  them  ;  but  to 


174  EDMUND  BURKE. 

write  such  a  pamphlet  as  future  genera- 
tions will  read  with  delight  is  perhaps  the 
most  difficult  feat  in  literature.  Milton, 
Swift,  Burke,  and  Sydney  Smith  are,  I 
think,  our  only  great  pamphleteers. 

I  have  now  rather  more  than  kept  my 
word  so  far  as  Burke's  pre-parliamentary 
life  is  concerned,  and  will  proceed  to  men- 
tion some  of  the  circumstances  that  may 
serve  to  account  for  the  fact,  that  when 
the  Rockingham  party  came  into  power 
for  the  second  time  in  1782,  Burke,  who 
was  their  life  and  soul,  was  only  rewarded 
with  a  minor  office.  First,  then,  it  must 
be  recorded  sorrowfully  of  Burke  that  he 
was  always  desperately  in  debt,  and  in 
this  country  no  politician  under  the  rank 
of  a  baronet  can  ever  safely  be  in  debt. 
Burke's  finances  are,  and  always  have 
been,  marvels  and  mysteries  ;  but  one 
thing  must  be  said  of  them  —  that  the 
malignity  of  his  enemies,  both  Tory  ene- 
mies and  Radical  enemies,  has  never  suc- 
ceeded in  formulating  any  charge  of  dis- 
honesty against  him  that  has  not  been  at 
once  completely  pulverised,  and  shown  on 


EDMUND  BURKE.  175 

the  facts  to  be  impossible.*  Burke's  pur- 
chase of  the  estate  at  Beaconsfield  in 
1768,  only  two  years  after  he  entered  Par- 
liament, consisting  as  it  did  of  a  good 
house  and  1,600  acres  of  land,  has  puzzled 
a  great  many  good  men  —  much  more 
than  it  ever  did  Edmund  Burke.  But  how 
did  he  get  the  money  ?  After  an  Irish 
fashion  —  by  not  getting  it  at  all.  Two- 
thirds  of  the  purchase-money  remained  on 
mortgage,  and  the  balance  he  borrowed  ; 
or,  as  he  puts  it,  '  With  all  I  could  collect 
of  my  own,  and  by  the  aid  of  my  friends,  I 
have  established  a  root  in  the  country.' 
That  is  how  Burke  bought  Beaconsfield, 
where  he  lived  till  his  end  came  ;  whither 
he  always  hastened  when  his  sensitive 
mind  was  tortured  by  the  thought  of  how 
badly  men  governed  the  world ;  where  he 

*  All  the  difficulties  connected  with  this  subject  will 
be  found  collected,  and  somewhat  unkindly  considered, 
in  Mr.  Dilke's  Papers  of  a  Critic,  vol.  ii.  The  equity 
draftsman  will  be  indisposed  to  attach  importance  to 
statements  made  in  a  Bill  of  Complaint  filed  in  Chan- 
cery by  Lord  Verney  against  Burke  fourteen  years  after 
the  transaction  to  which  it  had  reference,  in  a  suit  which 
was  abandoned  after  answer  put  in.  Yet  Mr.  Dilke 
thought  it  worth  while  to  reprint  this  ancient  Bill. 


176  EDMUND  BURKE. 

entertained  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men 
—  Quakers,  Brahmins  (for  whose  ancient 
rites  he  provided  suitable  accommodation 
in  a  greenhouse),  nobles  and  abbes  flying 
from  revolutionary  France,  poets,  painters, 
and  peers  ;  no  one  of  whom  ever  long  re- 
mained a  stranger  to  his  charm.  Burke 
flung  himself  into  farming  with  all  the  en- 
thusiasm of  his  nature.  His  letters  to 
Arthur  Young  on  the  subject  of  carrots 
still  tremble  with  emotion.  You  all  know 
Burke's  Thoughts  on  the  Present  Discon- 
tents. You  remember  —  it  is  hard  to  for- 
get —  his  speech  on  Conciliation  with 
America,  particularly  the  magnificent  pas- 
sage beginning,  '  Magnanimity  in  politics 
is  not  seldom  the  truest  wisdom,  and  a 
great  empire  and  little  minds  go  ill  to- 
gether.' You  have  echoed  back  the  words 
in  which,  in  his  letter  to  the  Sheriffs  of 
Bristol  on  the  hateful  American  War,  he 
protests  that  it  was  not  instantly  he  could 
be  brought  to  rejoice  when  he  heard  of  the 
slaughter  and  captivity  of  long  lists  of 
those  whose  names  had  been  familiar  in 
his  ears  from  his  infancy,  and  you  wfuld 
all  join  with  me  in  subscribing  to  a  fund 


EDMUND  BURKE.  177 

which  should  have  for  its  object  the  print- 
ing and  hanging  up  over  every  editor's 
desk  in  town  and  country  a  subsequent 
passage  from  the  same  letter  :  — 

'  A  conscientious  man  would  be  cautious 
how  he  dealt  in  blood.  He  would  feel  some 
apprehension  at  being  called  to  a  tremen- 
dous account  for  engaging  in  so  deep  a 
play  without  any  knowledge  of  the  game. 
It  is  no  excuse  for  presumptuous  ignorance 
that  it  is  directed  by  insolent  passion. 
The  poorest  being  that  crawls  on  earth, 
contending  to  save  itself  from  injustice  and 
oppression,  is  an  object  respectable  in  the 
eyes  of  God  and  man.  But  I  cannot  con- 
ceive any  existence  under  heaven  (which  in 
the  depths  of  its  wisdom  tolerates  all  sorts 
of  things)  that  is  more  truly  odious  and 
disgusting  than  an  impotent,  helpless 
creature,  without  civil  wisdom  or  military 
skill,  bloated  with  pride  and  arrogance,  call- 
ing for  battles  which  he  is  not  to  fight,  and 
contending  for  a  violent  dominion  which  he 
can  never  exercise.  .  .  . 

'  If  you  and  I  find  our  talents  not  of  the 
grea\  and  ruling  kind,  our  conduct  at  least 
is  conformable  to  our  faculties.  No  man's 


178  EDMUND  BURKE. 

life  pays  the  forfeit  of  our  rashness.  No 
desolate  widow  weeps  tears  of  blood  over 
our  ignorance.  Scrupulous  and  sober  in  a 
well-grounded  distrust  of  ourselves,  we 
would  keep  in  the  port  of  peace  and  se- 
curity ;  and  perhaps  in  recommending  to 
others  something  of  the  same  diffidence, 
we  should  show  ourselves  more  charitable 
to  their  welfare  than  injurious  to  their 
abilities.' 

You  have  laughed  over  Burke' s  account 
of  how  all  Lord  Talbot's  schemes  for  the 
reform  of  the  king's  household  were  dashed 
to  pieces,  because  the  turnspit  of  the 
king's  kitchen  was  a  Member  of  Parlia- 
ment. You  have  often  pondered  over  that 
miraculous  passage  in  his  speech  on  the 
Nabob  of  Arcot's  debts,  describing  the  de- 
vastation of  the  Carnatic  by  Hyder  Ali  — 
a  passage  which  Mr.  John  Morley  says  fills 
the  young  orator  with  the  same  emotions 
of  enthusiasm,  emulation,  and  despair  that 
(according  to  the  same  authority)  invariably 
torment  the  artist  who  first  gazes  on  'The 
Madonna'  at  Dresden,  or  the  figures  of 
'Night'  and  'Dawn'  at  Florence.  All 
these  things  you  know,  else  are  you  mighty 


EDMUND  BURKE.  1/9 

self-denying  of  your  pleasures.  But  it  is 
just  possible  you  may  have  forgotten  the 
following  extract  from  one  of  Burke's 
farming  letters  to  Arthur  Young :  — 

'  One  of  the  grand  points  in  controversy 
(a  controversy  indeed  chiefly  carried  on  be- 
tween practice  and  speculation)  is  that  of 
deep  ploughing.  In  your  last  volume  you 
seem,  on  the  whole,  rather  against  that 
practice,  and  have  given  several  reasons  for 
your  judgment  which  deserve  to  be  very 
well  considered.  In  order  to  know  how  we 
ought  to  plough,  we  ought  to  know  what 
end  it  is  we  propose  to  ourselves  in  that 
operation.  The  first  and  instrumental  end 
is  to  divide  the  soil ;  the  last  and  ultimate 
end,  so  far  as  regards  the  plants,  is  to 
facilitate  the  pushing  of  the  blade  upwards, 
and  the  shooting  of  the  roots  in  all  the  in- 
ferior directions.  There  is  further  pro- 
posed a  more  ready  admission  of  external 
influences  —  the  rain,  the  sun,  the  air, 
charged  with  all  those  heterogeneous  con- 
tents, some,  possibly  all,  of  which  are  nec- 
essary for  the  nourishment  of  the  plants. 
By  ploughing  deep  you  answer  these  ends 
in  a  greater  mass  of  the  soil.  This  would 


ISO  EDMUND  BURKE. 

seem  in  favour  of  deep  ploughing  as  noth- 
ing else  than  accomplishing,  in  a  more 
perfect  manner,  those  very  ends  for  which 
you  are  induced  to  plough  at  all.  But 
doubts  here  arise,  only  to  be  solved  by  ex- 
periment. First,  is  it  quite  certain  that  it 
is  good  for  the  ear  and  grain  of  farinaceous 
plants  that  their  roots  should  spread  and 
descend  into  the  ground  to  the  greatest 
possible  distances  and  depths  ?  Is  there 
not  some  limit  in  this  ?  We  know  that 
in  timber,  what  makes  one  part  flourish 
does  not  equally  conduce  to  the  benefit  of 
all ;  and  that  which  may  be  beneficial  to 
the  wood,  does  not  equally  contribute  to 
the  quantity  and  goodness  of  the  fruit  ; 
and,  vice  versa,  that  what  increases  the  fruit 
largely  is  often  far  from  serviceable  to  the 
tree.  Secondly,  is  that  looseness  to  great 
depths,  supposing  it  is  useful  to  one  of  the 
species  of  plants,  equally  useful  to  all  ? 
Thirdly,  though  the  external  influences  — 
the  rain,  the  sun,  the  air — act  undoubt- 
edly a  part,  and  a  large  part,  in  vegetation, 
does  it  follow  that  they  are  equally  salutary 
in  any  quantities,  at  any  depths  ?  Or  that, 
though  it  may  be  useful  to  diffuse  one  of 


EDMUND  BURKE.  l8l 

these  agents  as  extensively  as  may  be  in 
the  earth,  that  therefore  it  will  be  equally 
useful  to  render  the  earth  in  the  same  de- 
gree pervious  to  all  ?  It  is  a  dangerous 
way  of  reasoning  in  physics,  as  well  as 
morals,  to  conclude,  because  a  given  pro- 
portion of  anything  is  advantageous,  that 
the  double  will  be  quite  as  good,  or  that  it 
will  be  good  at  all.  Neither  in  the  one  nor 
the  other  is  it  always  true  that  two  and  two 
make  four.' 

This  is  magnificent,  but  it  is  not  farm- 
ing, and  you  will  easily  believe  that  Burke's 
attempts  to  till  the  soil  were  more  costly 
than  productive.  Farming,  if  it  is  to  pay, 
is  a  pursuit  of  small  economies ;  and  Burke 
was  far  too  Asiatic,  tropical,  and  splendid 
to  have  anything  to  do  with  small  econo- 
mies. His  expenditure,  like  his  rhetoric, 
was  in  the  '  grand  style.'  He  belongs  to 
Charles  Lamb's  great  race,  '  the  men  who 
borrow.'  But  indeed  it  was  not  so  much 
that  Burke  borrowed  as  that  men  lent. 
Right-feeling  men  did  not  wait  to  be 
asked.  Dr.  Brocklesby,  that  good  physi- 
cian, whose  name  breathes  like  a  benedic- 
tion through  the  pages  of  the  biographies 


1 82  EDMUND  BURKE. 

of  the  best  men  of  his  time,  who  soothed 
Dr.  Johnson's  last  melancholy  hours,  and 
for  whose  supposed  heterodoxy  the  dying 
man  displayed  so  tender  a  solicitude,  wrote 
to  Burke,  in  the  strain  of  a  timid  suitor 
proposing  for  the  hand  of  a  proud  heiress, 
to  know  whether  Burke  would  be  so  good 
as  to  accept  £1,000  at  once,  instead  of 
waiting  for  the  writer's  death.  Burke  felt 
no  hesitation  in  obliging  so  old  a  friend. 
Garrick,  who,  though  fond  of  money,  was 
as  generous  -  hearted  a  fellow  as  ever 
brought  down  a  house,  lent  Burke  £1,000. 
Sir  Joshua  Reynolds,  who  has  been  reck- 
oned stingy,  by  his  will  left  Burke  ,£2,000, 
and  forgave  him  another  .£2,000  which  he 
had  lent  him.  The  Marquis  of  Rocking- 
ham  by  his  will  directed  all  Burke's  bonds 
held  by  him  to  be  cancelled.  They 
amounted  to  £30,000.  Burke's  patrimo- 
nial estate  was  sold  by  him  for  £4,000 ;  and 
I  have  seen  it  stated  that  he  had  received 
altogether  from  family  sources  as  much  as 
£20,000.  And  yet  he  was  always  poor, 
and  was  glad  at  the  last  to  accept  pensions 
from  the  Crown  in  order  that  he  might  not 
leave  his  wife  a  beggar.  This  good  lady 


EDMUND  BURKE.  183 

survived  her  illustrious  husband  twelve 
years,  and  seemed  as  his  widow  to  have 
some  success  in  paying  his  bills,  for  at  her 
death  all  remaining  demands  were  found 
to  be  discharged.  For  receiving  this  pen- 
sion Burke  was  assailed  by  the  Duke  of 
Bedford,  a  most  pleasing  act  of  ducal 
fatuity,  since  it  enabled  the  pensioner,  not 
bankrupt  of  his  wit,  to  write  a  pamphlet, 
now  of  course  a  cherished  classic,  and  in- 
troduce into  it  a  few  paragraphs  about  the 
House  of  Russell  and  the  cognate  subject 
of  grants  from  the  Crown.  But  enough  of 
Burke's  debts  and  difficulties,  which  I  only 
mention  because  all  through  his  life  they 
were  cast  up  against  him.  Had  Burke 
been  a  moralist  of  the  calibre  of  Charles 
James  Fox,  he  might  have  amassed  a  for- 
tune large  enough  to  keep  up  half-a-dozen 
Beacon sfields,  by  simply  doing  what  all  his 
predecessors  in  the  office  he  held,  includ- 
ing Fox's  own  father,  the  truly  infamous 
first  Lord  Holland,  had  done  —  namely, 
by  retaining  for  his  own  use  the  interest 
on  all  balances  of  the  public  money  from 
time  to  time  in  his  hands  as  Paymaster  of 
the  Forces.  But  Burke  carried  his  passion 


184  EDMUND  BURKE. 

for  good  government  into  actual  practice, 
and,  cutting  down  the  emoluments  of  his 
office  to  a  salary  (a  high  one,  no  doubt), 
effected  a  saving  to  the  country  of  some 
^25,000  a  year,  every  farthing  of  which 
might  have  gone  without  remark  into  his 
own  pocket. 

Burke  had  no  vices,  save  of  style  and 
temper  ;  nor  was  any  of  his  expenditure  a 
profligate  squandering  of  money.  It  all 
went  in  giving  employment  or  disseminat- 
ing kindness.  He  sent  the  painter  Barry 
to  study  art  in  Italy.  He  saved  the  poet 
Crabbe  from  starvation  and  despair,  and 
thus  secured  to  the  country  one  who  owns 
the  unrivalled  distinction  of  having  been 
the  favourite  poet  of  the  three  greatest 
intellectual  factors  of  the  age  (scientific 
men  excepted),  —  Lord  Byron,  Sir  Walter 
Scott,  and  Cardinal  Newman.  Yet  so  dis- 
torted are  men's  views  that  the  odious  and 
anti-social  excesses  of  Fox  at  the  gambling- 
table  are  visited  with  a  blame  usually 
wreathed  in  smiles,  whilst  the  financial 
irregularities  of  a  noble  and  pure-minded 
man  are  thought  fit  matter  for  the  fiercest 
censure  or  the  most  lordly  contempt. 


EDMUND  BURKE.  185 

Next  to  Burke's  debts,  some  of  his  com- 
panions and  intimates  did  him  harm  and 
injured  his  consequence.  His  brother 
Richard,  whose  brogue  we  are  given  to 
understand  was  simply  appalling,  was  a 
good-for-nothing,  with  a  dilapidated  repu- 
tation. Then  there  was  another  Mr.  Burke, 
who  was  no  relation,  but  none  the  less  was 
always  about,  and  to  whom  it  was  not  safe 
to  lend  money.  Burke's  son,  too,  whose 
death  he  mourned  so  pathetically,  seems  to 
have  been  a  failure,  and  is  described  by  a 
candid  friend  as  a  nauseating  person.  To 
have  a  decent  following  is  important  in 
politics. 

A  third  reason  must  be  given :  Burke's 
judgment  of  men  and  things  was  often 
both  wrong  and  violent.  The  story  of 
Powell  and  Bembridge,  two  knaves  in 
Burke's  own  office,  whose  cause  he  es- 
poused, and  whom  he  insisted,  on  reinstat- 
ing in  the  public  service  after  they  had 
been  dismissed,  and  maintaining  them 
there,  in  spite  of  all  protests,  till  the  one 
had  the  grace  to  cut  his  throat  and  the 
other  was  sentenced  by  the  Queen's  Bench 
to  a  term  of  imprisonment  and  a  heavy 


1 86  EDMUND  BURKE. 

fine,  is  too  long  to  be  told,  though  it  makes 
interesting  reading  in  the  twenty-second 
volume  of  Ho  well's  State  Trials,  where  at 
the  end  of  the  report  is  to  be  found  the 
following  note :  — 

'  The  proceedings  against  Messrs.  Powell 
and  Bembridge  occasioned  much  animated 
discussion  in  the  House  of  Commons,  in 
which  Mr.  Burke  warmly  supported  the 
accused.  The  compassion  which  on  these 
and  all  other  occasions  was  manifested  by 
Mr.  Burke  for  the  sufferings  of  those  pub- 
lic delinquents,  the  zeal  with  which  he 
advocated  their  cause,  and  the  eagerness 
with  which  he  endeavoured  to  extenuate 
their  criminality,  have  received  severe  rep- 
rehension, and  in  particular  when  con- 
trasted with  his  subsequent  conduct  in  the 
prosecution  of  Mr.  Hastings.' 

The  real  reason  for  Burke's  belief  in 
Bembridge  is,  I  think,  to  be  found  in  the 
evidence  Burke  gave  on  his  behalf  at  the 
trial  before  Lord  Mansfield.  Bembridge 
had  rendered  Burke  invaluable  assistance 
in  carrying  out  his  reforms  at  the  Pay- 
master's Office,  and  Burke  was  constitu- 
tionally unable  to  believe  that  a  rogue 


EDMUND  BURKE.  l8/ 

could  be  on  his  side  ;  but,  indeed,  Burke 
was  too  apt  to  defend  bad  causes  with  a 
scream  of  passion,  and  a  politician  who 
screams  is  never  likely  to  occupy  a  com- 
manding place  in  the  House  of  Commons. 
A  last  reason  for  Burke's  exclusion  from 
high  office  is  to  be  found  in  his  aversion 
to  any  measure  of  Parliamentary  Reform. 
An  ardent  reformer  like  the  Duke  of  Rich- 
mond—  the  then  Duke  of  Richmond  — 
who  was  in  favour  of  annual  parliaments, 
universal  suffrage,  and  payment  of  mem- 
bers, was  not  likely  to  wish  to  associate 
himself  too  closely  with  a  politician  who 
wept  with  emotion  at  the  bare  thought 
of  depriving  Old  Sarum  of  parliamentary 
representation. 

These  reasons  account  for  Burke's  ex- 
clusion, and  jealous  as  we  naturally  and 
properly  are  of  genius  being  snubbed  by 
mediocrity,  my  reading  at  all  events  does 
not  justify  me  in  blaming  any  one  but  the 
Fates  for  the  circumstance  that  Burke  was 
never  a  Secretary  of  State.  And  after  all, 
does  it  matter  much  what  he  was  ?  Burke 
no  doubt  occasionally  felt  his  exclusion  a 
little  hard ;  but  he  is  the  victor  who  re- 


1 88  EDMUND  BURKE. 

mains  in  possession  of  the  field  ;  and  Burke 
is  now,  for  us  and  for  all  coming  after  us, 
in  such  possession. 

It  now  only  remains  for  me,  drawing 
upon  my  stock  of  assurance,  to  essay  the 
analysis  of  the  essential  elements  of  Burke's 
mental  character,  and  I  therefore  at  once 
proceed  to  say  that  it  was  Burke's  pecul- 
iarity and  his  glory  to  apply  the  imagina- 
tion of  a  poet  of  the  first  order  to  the  facts 
and  the  business  of  life.  Arnold  says  of 
Sophocles  — 

'  He  saw  life  steadily,  and  saw  it  whole.' 

Substitute  for  the  word  'life'  the  words 
'organised  society,'  and  you  get  a  peep 
into  Burke's  mind.  There  was  a  catholic- 
ity about  his  gaze.  He  knew  how  the 
whole  world  lived.  E  r  "•"'thing  contributed 
to  this :  his  vast  desultory  re.  ding  ;  his 
education,  neither  wholly  academical  nor 
entirely  professional ;  his  long  years  of 
apprenticeship  in  the  service  of  knowledge  ; 
his  wanderings  up  and  down  the  country ; 
his  vast  conversational  powers  ;  his  enor- 
mous correspondence  with  all  sorts  of  peo- 
ple ;  his  unfailing  interest  in  all  pursuits, 


EDMUND  BURKE.  189 

trades,  manufactures,  — all  helped  to  keep 
before  him,  like  motes  dancing  in  a  sun- 
beam, the  huge  organism  of  modern  soci- 
ety, which  requires  for  its  existence  and 
for  its  development  the  maintenance  of 
credit  and  of  order.  Burke's  imagination 
led  him  to  look  out  over  the  whole  land  : 
the  legislator  devising  new  laws,  the  judge 
expounding  and  enforcing  old  ones,  the 
merchant  despatching  his  goods  and  ex- 
tending his  credit,  the  banker  advancing 
the  money  of  his  customers  upon  the  credit 
of  the  merchant,  the  frugal  man  slowly 
accumulating  the  store  which  is  to  support 
him  in  old  age,  the  ancient  institutions  of 
Church  and  University  with  their  seemly 
provisions  for  sound  learning  and  true  reli- 
gion, the  parson  in  his  pulpit,  the  poet 
pondering  his  rhymes,  the  farmer  eyeing 
his  crops,  the  painter  covering  his  can- 
vases, the  player  educating  the  feelings. 
Burke  saw  all  this  with  the  fancy  of  a  poet, 
and  dwelt  on  it  with  the  eye  of  a  lover. 
But  love  is  the  parent  of  fear,  and  none 
knew  better  than  Burke  how  thin  is  the 
lava  layer  between  the  costly  fabric  of  so- 
ciety and  the  volcanic  heats  and  destroy- 


190  EDMUND   BURKE. 

ing  flames  of  anarchy.  He  trembled  for 
the  fair  frame  of  all  established  things,  and 
to  his  horror  saw  men,  instead  of  covering 
the  thin  surface  with  the  concrete,  digging 
in  it  for  abstractions,  and  asking  funda- 
mental questions  about  the  origin  of  soci- 
ety, and  why  one  man  should  be  born  rich 
and  another  poor.  Burke  was  no  prating 
optimist :  it  was  his  very  knowledge  how 
much  could  be  said  against  society  that 
quickened  his  fears  for  it.  There  is  no 
shallower  criticism  than  that  which  accuses 
Burke  in  his  later  years  of  apostasy  from 
so-called  Liberal  opinions.  Burke  was  all 
his  life  through  a  passionate  maintainer  of 
the  established  order  of  things,  and  a  fero- 
cious hater  of  abstractions  and  metaphys- 
ical politics.  The  same  ideas  that  explode 
like  bombs  through  his  diatribes  against 
the  French  Revolution  are  to  be  found 
shining  with  a  mild  effulgence  in  the  com- 
parative calm  of  his  earlier  writings.  I 
have  often  been  struck  with  a  resemblance, 
which  I  hope  is  not  wholly  fanciful,  be- 
tween the  attitude  of  Burke's  mind  towards 
government  and  that  of  Cardinal  Newman 
towards  religion.  Both  these  great  men 


EDMUND  BURKE.  1 9! 

belong,  by  virtue  of  their  imaginations,  to 
the  poetic  order,  and  they  both  are  to  be 
found  dwelling  with  amazing  eloquence, 
detail,  and  wealth  of  illustration  on  the 
varied  elements  of  society.  Both  seem  as 
they  write  to  have  one  hand  on  the  pulse 
of  the  world,  and  to  be  for  ever  alive  to  the 
throb  of  its  action  ;  and  Burke,  as  he  re- 
garded humanity  swarming  like  bees  into 
and  out  of  their  hives  of  industry,  is  ever 
asking  himself,  How  are  these  men  to  be 
saved  from  anarchy  ?  whilst  Newman  puts 
to  himself  the  question,  How  are  these 
men  to  be  saved  from  Atheism  ?  Both 
saw  the  perils  of  free  inquiry  divorced 
from  practical  affairs. 

'  Civil  freedom,'  says  Burke,  '  is  not,  as 
many  have  endeavoured  to  persuade  you,  a 
thing  that  lies  hid  in  the  depth  of  abstruse 
science.  It  is  a  blessing  and  a  benefit,  not 
an  abstract  speculation  ;  and  all  the  just 
reasoning  that  can  be  upon  it  is  of  so 
coarse  a  texture  as  perfectly  to  suit  the 
ordinary  capacities  of  those  who  are  to  en- 
joy and  of  those  who  are  to  defend  it.' 

'  Tell  men,'  says  Cardinal  Newman,  '  to 
gain  notions  of  a  Creator  from  His  works, 


1 92  EDMUND  BURKE. 

and  if  they  were  to  set  about  it  (which 
nobody  does),  they  would  be  jaded  and 
wearied  by  the  labyrinth  they  were  tra- 
cing ;  their  minds  would  be  gorged  and 
surfeited  by  the  logical  operation.  To 
most  men  argument  makes  the  point  in 
hand  more  doubtful  and  considerably  less 
impressive.  After  all,  man  is  not  a  reason- 
ing animal,  he  is  a  seeing,  feeling,  contem- 
plating, acting  animal.' 

Burke  is  fond  of  telling  us  that  he  is  no 
lawyer,  no  antiquarian,  but  a  plain,  prac- 
tical man  ;  and  the  Cardinal,  in  like  man- 
ner, is  ever  insisting  that  he  is  no  theolo- 
gian —  he  leaves  everything  of  that  sort  to 
the  Schools,  whatever  they  may  be,  and 
simply  deals  with  religion  on  its  practical 
side  as  a  benefit  to  mankind. 

If  either  of  these  great  men  has  been 
guilty  of  intellectual  excesses,  those  of 
Burke  may  be  attributed  to  his  dread  of 
anarchy,  those  of  Newman  to  his  dread  of 
atheism.  Neither  of  them  was  prepared 
to  rest  content  with  a  scientific  frontier, 
an  imaginary  line.  So  much  did  they 
dread  their  enemy,  so  alive  were  they  to 
the  terrible  strength  of  some  of  his  posi- 


EDMUND  BURKE.  193 

tions,  that  they  could  not  agree  to  dispense 
with  the  protection  afforded  by  the  huge 
mountains  of  prejudice  and  the  ancient 
rivers  of  custom.  The  sincerity  of  either 
man  can  only  be  doubted  by  the  bigot  and 
the  fool. 

But  Burke,  apart  from  his  fears,  had  a 
constitutional  love  for  old  things,  simply 
because  they  were  old.  Anything  man- 
kind had  ever  worshipped,  or  venerated,  or 
obeyed,  was  dear  to  him.  I  have  already 
referred  to  his  providing  his  Brahmins 
with  a  greenhouse  for  the  purpose  of  their 
rites,  which  he  watched  from  outside  with 
great  interest.  One  cannot  fancy  Cardinal 
Newman  peeping  through  a  window  to  see 
men  worshipping  false  though  ancient  gods. 
Warren  Hastings's  high-handed  dealings 
with  the  temples  and  time-honoured  if 
scandalous  customs  of  the  Hindoos  filled 
Burke  with  horror.  So,  too,  he  respected 
Quakers,  Presbyterians,  Independents,  Bap- 
tists, and  all  those  whom  he  called  Con- 
stitutional Dissenters.  He  has  a  fine  pas- 
sage somewhere  about  Rust,  for  with  all 
his  passion  for  good  government  he  dearly 
loved  a  little  rust.  In  this  phase  of  char- 


194  EDMUND  BURKE. 

acter  he  reminds  one  not  a  little  of  another 
great  writer  —  whose  death  literature  has 
still  reason  to  deplore  —  George  Eliot ; 
who,  in  her  love  for  old  hedge-rows  and 
barns  and  crumbling  moss-grown  walls, 
was  a  writer  after  Burke' s  own  heart, 
whose  novels  he  would  have  sat  up  all 
night  to  devour  ;  for  did  he  not  deny  with 
warmth  Gibbon's  statement  that  he  had 
read  all  five  volumes  of  Evelina  in  a  day  ? 
'The  thing  is  impossible,'  cried  Burke; 
'they  took  me  three  days,  doing  nothing 
else.'  Now,  Evelina  is  a  good  novel,  but 
Silas  Marner  is  a  better. 

Wordsworth  has  been  called  the  High 
Priest  of  Nature.  Burke  may  be  called 
the  High  Priest  of  Order  —  a  lover  of  set- 
tled ways,  of  justice,  peace,  and  security. 
His  writings  are  a  storehouse  of  wisdom, 
not  the  cheap  shrewdness  of  the  mere  man 
of  the  world,  but  the  noble,  animating  wis- 
dom of  one  who  has  the  poet's  heart  as 
well  as  the  statesman's  brain.  Nobody  is 
fit  to  govern  this  country  who  has  not 
drunk  deep  at  the  springs  of  Burke.  '  Have 
you  read  your  Burke  ? '  is  at  least  as  sen- 
sible a  question  to  put  to  a  parliamentary 


EDMUND  BURKE.  195 

candidate,  as  to  ask  him  whether  he  is  a 
total  abstainer  or  a  desperate  drunkard. 
Something  there  may  be  about  Burke  to 
.regret,  and  more  to  dispute  ;  but  that  he 
loved  justice  and  hated  iniquity  is  certain, 
as  also  it  is  that  for  the  most  part  he  dwelt 
in  the  paths  of  purity,  humanity,  and  good 
sense.  May  we  be  found  adhering  to 
them! 


THE   MUSE   OF   HISTORY. 

Two  distinguished  men  of  letters,  each 
an  admirable  representative  of  his  Univer- 
sity, —  Mr.  John  Morley  and  Professor  See- 
ley  —  have  lately  published  opinions  on 
the  subject  of  history,  which,  though  very 
likely  to  prove  right,  deserve  to  be  care- 
fully considered  before  assent  is  bestowed 
upon  them. 

Mr.  Morley,  when  President  of  the  Mid- 
land Institute,  and  speaking  in  the  Town 
Hall  of  Birmingham,  said  :  '  I  do  not  in 
the  least  want  to  know  what  happened  in 
the  past,  except  as  it  enables  me  to  see  my 
way  more  clearly  through  what  is  happen- 
ing to-day,'  and  this  same  indifference  is 
professed,  though  certainly  nowhere  dis- 
played, in  other  parts  of  Mr.  Morley's 
writings.* 

Professor  Seeley  never  makes  his  point 

*  Critical  Miscellanies,  vol.  in.,  p.  9. 


THE  MUSE  OF  HISTORY.  197 

quite  so  sharp  as  this,  and  probably  would 
hesitate  to  do  so,  but  in  the  Expansion  of 
England  he  expounds  a  theory  of  history 
largely  based  upon  an  indifference  like  that 
which  Mr.  Morley  professed  at  Birming- 
ham. His  book  opens  thus  :  —  '  It  is  a  fa- 
vourite maxim  of  mine  that  history,  while 
it  should  be  scientific  in  its  method,  should 
pursue  a  practical  object  — that  is,  it  should 
not  merely  gratify  the  reader's  curiosity 
about  the  past,  but  modify  his  view  of  the 
present  and  his  forecast  of  the  future. 
Now,  if  this  maxim  be  sound,  the  history 
of  England  ought  to  end  with  something 
that  might  be  called  a  moral.' 

This,  it  must  be  admitted,  is  a  large 
order.  The  task  of  the  historian,  as  here 
explained,  is  not  merely  to  tell  us  the  story 
of  the  past,  and  thus  gratify  our  curiosity, 
but,  pursuing  a  practical  object,  to  seek  to 
modify  our  views  of  the  present  and  help 
us  in  our  forecasts  of  the  future  ;  and  this 
the  historian  is  to  do,  not  unconsciously 
and  incidentally,  but  deliberately  and  of 
set  purpose.  One  can  well  understand 
how  history,  so  written,  will  usually  begin 
with  a  maxim,  and  invariably  end  with  a 
moral. 


198  THE  MUSE   OF  HISTORY. 

What  we  are  afterwards  told  in  the 
same  book  follows  in  logical  sequence  upon 
our  first  quotation  —  namely,  that  '  history 
fades  into  mere  literature,  (the  italics  are 
ours)  when  it  loses  sight  of  its  relation  to 
practical  politics.'  In  this  grim  sentence 
we  read  the  dethronement  of  Clio.  The 
poor  thing  must  forswear  her  father's  house, 
her  tuneful  sisters,  the  invocation  of  the 
poet,  the  worship  of  the  dramatist,  and 
keep  her  terms  at  the  University,  where, 
if  she  is  really  studious  and  steady,  and 
avoids  literary  companions  (which  ought 
not  to  be  difficult),  she  may  hope  some  day 
to  be  received  into  the  Royal  Society  as  a 
second-rate  science.  The  people  who  do 
not  usually  go  to  the  Royal  Society  will 
miss  their  old  playmate  from  her  accus- 
tpmed  slopes,  but,  even  were  they  to  suc- 
ceed in  tracing  her  to  her  new  home,  ac- 
cess would  be  denied  them  ;  for  Professor 
Seeley,  that  stern  custodian,  has  his  answer 
ready  for  all  such  seekers.  '  If  you  want 
recreation,  you  must  find  it  in  Poetry,  par- 
ticularly Lyrical  Poetry.  Try  Shelley.  We 
can  no  longer  allow  you  to  disport  your- 
selves in  the  Fields  of  History  as  if  they 
were  a  mere  playground.  Clio  is  enclosed.' 


THE  MUSE  OF  HISTORY.  199 

At  present,  however,  this  is  not  quite 
the  case  ;  for  the  old  literary  traditions  are 
still  alive,  and  prove  somewhat  irritating 
to  Professor  Seeley,  who,  though  one  of 
the  most  even-tempered  of  writers,  is  to 
be  found  on  p.  173  almost  angry  with 
Thackeray,  a  charming  person,  who,  as  we 
all  know,  had,,  after  his  lazy  literary  fashion, 
made  an  especial  study  of  Queen  Anne's 
time,  and  who  cherished  the  pleasant  fancy 
that  a  man  might  lie  in  the  heather  with  a 
pipe  in  his  mouth,  and  yet,  if  he  had  only 
an  odd  volume  of  the  Spectator  or  the  Tat- 
ler  in  his  hand,  be  learning  history  all  the 
time.  '  As  we  read  in  these  delightful 
pages,'  says  the  author  of  Esmond,  '  the 
past  age  returns ;  the  England  of  our  an- 
cestors is  revivified  ;  the  Maypole  rises  in 
the  Strand  ;  the  beaux  are  gathering  in  the 
coffee  houses ; '  and  so  on,  in  the  style  we 
all  know  and  love  so  well,  and  none  better, 
we  may  rest  assured,  than  Professor  See- 
ley  himself,  if  only  he  were  not  tortured 
by  the  thought  that  people  were  taking 
this  to  be  a  specimen  of  the  science  of 
which  he  is  a  Regius  Professor.  His  com- 
ment on  this  passage  of  Thackeray's  is  al- 


20O  THE  MUSE   OF  HISTORY. 

most  a  groan.  '  What  is  this  but  the  old 
literary  groove,  leading  to  no  trustworthy 
knowledge  ? '  and  certainly  no  one  of  us, 
from  letting  his  fancy  gaze  on  the  May- 
pole in  the  Strand,  could  ever  have  fore- 
told the  Griffin.  On  the  same  page  he 
cries  :  '  Break  the  drowsy  spell  of  narra- 
tive. Ask  yourself  questions,  set  yourself 
problems  ;  your  mind  will  at  once  take  up 
a  new  attitude.  Now  modern  English  his- 
tory breaks  up  into  two  grand  problems 
—  the  problem  of  the  Colonies  and  the 
problem  of  India.'  The  Cambridge  School 
of  History  with  a  vengeance. 

In  a  paper  read  at  the  South  Kensing- 
ton Museum  in  1884,  Professor  Seeley 
observes  :  '  The  essential  point  is  this,  that 
we  should  recognise  that  to  study  history 
is  to  study  not  merely  a  narrative,  but  at 
the  same  time  certain  theoretical  studies.' 
He  then  proceeds  to  name  them  : —  Politi- 
cal philosophy,  the  comparative  study  of 
legal  institutions,  political  economy,  and 
international  law. 

These  passages  are,  I  think,  adequate  to 
give  a  fair  view  of  Professor  Seeley 's  posi- 
tion. History  is  a  science,  to  be  written 


THE  MUSE  OF  HISTORY.  2OI 

scientifically  and  to  be  studied  scientifi- 
cally in  conjunction  with  other  studies.  It 
should  pursue  a  practical  object  and  be 
read  with  direct  reference  to  practical  poli- 
tics —  using  the  latter  word,  no  doubt,  in 
an  enlightened  sense.  History  is  not  a 
narrative  of  all  sorts  of  facts  —  biographi- 
cal, moral,  political,  —  but  of  such  facts  as 
a  scientific  diagnosis  has  ascertained  to  be 
historically  interesting.  In  fine,  history, 
if  her  study  is  to  be  profitable  and  not  a 
mere  pastime,  less  exhausting  than  skittles 
and  cheaper  than  horse  exercise,  must  be 
dominated  by  some  theory  capable  of  verifi- 
cation by  reference  to  certain  ascertained 
facts  belonging  to  a  particular  class. 

Is  this  the  right  way  of  looking  upon 
history  ?  The  dictionaries  tell  us  that  his- 
tory and  story  are  the  same  word,  and  are 
derived  from  a  Greek  source,  signifying 
information  obtained  by  inquiry.  The 
natural  definition  of  history,  therefore, 
surely  is  the  story  of  man  upon  earth,  and 
the  historian  is  he  who  tells  us  any  chap- 
ter or  fragment  of  that  story.  All  things 

that  on  earth  do  dwell  have,  no  doubt,  their 

• 

history  as  well  as  man  ;  but  when  a  mem- 


202  THE  MUSE   OF  HISTORY. 

her,  however  humble,  of  the  human  race 
speaks  of  history  without  any  explanatory 
context,  he  may  be  presumed  to  be  allud- 
ing to  his  own  family  records,  to  the  story 
of  humanity  during  its  passage  across  the 
earth's  surface. 

'  A  talent  for  history  '  —  I  am  quoting 
from  an  author  whose  style,  let  those  mock 
at  it  who  may,  will  reveal  him  —  '  may  be 
said  to  be  born  with  us  as  our  chief  inher- 
itance. History  has  been  written  with 
quipo-threads,  with  feather  pictures,  with 
wampum  belts,  still  oftener  with  earth- 
mounds  and  monumental  stone -heaps, 
whether  as  pyramid  or  cairn  ;  for  the  Celt 
and  the  Copt,  the  red  man  as  well  as  the 
white,  lives  between  two  eternities,  and 
warring  against  oblivion,  he  would  fain 
unite  himself  in  clear,  conscious  relation, 
as  in  dim  unconscious  relation  he  is  al- 
ready united,  with  the  whole  future  and 
the  whole  past.' 

To  keep  the  past  alive  for  us  is  the 
pious  function  of  the  historian.  Our  curi- 
osity is  endless,  his  the  task  of  gratifying 
it.  We  want  to  know  what  happened  long 
ago.  Performance  of  this  task  is  only 


THE  MUSE   OF  HISTORY.  2O3 

proximately  possible ;  but  none  the  less 
it  must  be  attempted,  for  the  demand  for 
it  is  born  afresh  with  every  infant's  cry. 
History  is  a  pageant  and  not  a  philosophy. 

Poets,  no  less  than  professors,  occasion- 
ally say  good  things  even  in  prose,  and  the 
following  oracular  utterance  of  Shelley  is 
not  pure  nonsense  :  — '  History  is  the  cyc- 
lic poem  written  by  Time  upon  the  mem- 
ories of  men.  The  past,  like  an  inspired 
rhapsodist,  fills  the  theatre  of  everlasting 
generations  with  her  harmony.'' 

If  this  be  thought  a  little  too  fanciful, 
let  me  adorn  this  page  with  a  passage  from 
one  of  the  great  masters  of  English  prose 
—  Walter  Savage  Landor.  Would  that  the 
pious  labour  of  transcription  could  confer 
the  tiniest  measure  of  the  gift !  In  that 
bundle  of  imaginary  letters  Landor  called 
Pericles  and  Aspasia,  we  find  Aspasia 
writing  to  her  friend  Cleone  as  follows  :  — 

'  To-day  there  came  to  visit  us  a  writer 
who  is  not  yet  an  author  :  his  name  is 
Thucydides.  We  understand  that  he  has 
been  these  several  years  engaged  in  prep- 
aration for  a  history.  Pericles  invited  him 
to  meet  Herodotus,  when  that  wonderful 


2O4  THE  MUSE   OF  HISTORY. 

man  had  returned  to  our  country,  and  was 
about  to  sail  from  Athens.  Until  then  it 
was  believed  by  the  intimate  friends  of 
Thucydides  that  he  would  devote  his  life 
to  poetry,  and,  such  is  his  vigour  both  of 
thought  and  expression,  that  he  would 
have  been  the  rival  of  Pindar.  Even  now 
he  is  fonder  of  talking  on  poetry  than  any 
other  subject,  and  blushed  when  history 
was  mentioned.  By  degrees,  however,  he 
warmed,  and  listened  with  deep  interest  to 
the  discourse  of  Pericles  on  the  duties  of 
a  historian. 

'  "  May  our  first  Athenian  historian  not 
be  the  greatest,"  said  he,  "  as  the  first  of 
our  dramatists  has  been,  in  the  opinion  of 
many.  We  are  growing  too  loquacious, 
both  on  the  stage  and  off.  We  make  dis- 
quisitions which  render  us  only  more  and 
more  dim-sighted,  and  excursions  that  only 
consume  our  stores.  If  some  among  us 
who  have  acquired  celebrity  by  their  com- 
positions, calm,  candid,  contemplative  men, 
were  to  undertake  the  history  of  Athens 
from  the  invasion  of  Xerxes,  I  should  ex- 
pect a  fair  and  full  criticism  on  the  ora- 
tions of  Antiphon,  and  experience  no  dis- 


THE  MUSE   OF  HISTORY.  205 

appointment  at  their  forgetting  the  battle 
of  Salamis.  History,  when  she  has  lost 
her  Muse,  will  lose  her  dignity,  her  occu- 
pation, her  character,  her  name.  She  will 
wander  about  the  Agora  ;  she  will  start, 
she  will  stop,  she  will  look  wild,  she  will 
look  stupid,  she  will  take  languidly  to  her 
bosom  doubts,  queries,  essays,  disserta- 
tions, some  of  which  ought  to  go  before 
her,  some  to  follow,  and  all  to  stand  apart. 
The  field  of  history  should  not  merely  be 
well  tilled,  but  well  peopled.  None  is  de- 
lightful to  me  or  interesting  in  which  I 
find  not  as  many  illustrious  names  as  have 
a  right  to  enter  it.  We  might  as  well  in  a 
drama  place  the  actors  behind  the  scenes, 
and  listen  to  the  dialogue  there,  as  in  a 
history  push  valiant  men  back  and  pro- 
trude ourselves  with  husky  disputations. 
Show  me  rather  how  great  projects  were 
executed,  great  advantages  gained,  and 
great  calamities  averted.  Show  me  the 
generals  and  the  statesmen  who  stood  fore- 
most, that  I  may  bend  to  them  in  rever- 
ence ;  tell  me  their  names,  that  I  may  re- 
peat them  to  my  children.  Teach  me 
whence  laws  were  introduced,  upon  what 


2O6  THE  MUSE  OF  HISTORY. 

foundation  laid,  by  what  custody  guarded, 
in  what  inner  keep  preserved.  Let  the 
books  of  the  treasury  lie  closed  as  reli- 
giously as  the  Sibyl's  ;  leave  weights  and 
measures  in  the  market-place,  Commerce 
in  the  harbour,  the  Arts  in  the  light  they 
love,  Philosophy  in  the  shade  ;  place  His- 
tory on  her  rightful  throne,  and  at  the 
sides  of  her  Eloquence  and  War."  ' 

This  is,  doubtless,  a  somewhat  full-dress 
view  of  history.  Landor  was  not  one  of  our 
modern  dressing-gown-and-slippers  kind  of 
authors.  He  always  took  pains  to  be  splen- 
did, and  preferred  stately  magnificence  to 
chatty  familiarity.  But,  after  allowing  for 
this,  is  not  the  passage  I  have  quoted  in- 
fused with  a  great  deal  of  the  true  spirit 
which  should  animate  the  historian,  and 
does  it  not  seem  to  take  us  by  the  hand, 
and  lead  us  very  far  away  from  Professor 
Seeley's  maxims  and  morals,  his  theoretical 
studies,  his  political  philosophy,  his  political 
economy,  and  his  desire  to  break  the  drowsy 
spell  of  narrative,  and  to  set  us  all  problems  ? 
I  ask  this  question  in  no  spirit  of  enmity 
towards  these  theoretical  studies,  nor  do  I 
doubt  for  one  moment  that  the  student  of 


THE  MUSE   OF  HISTORY.  2O/ 

history  proper,  who  has  a  turn  in  their 
directions,  will  find  his  pursuit  made  only 
the  more  fascinating  the  more  he  studies 
them — just  as  a  little  botany  is  said  to 
add  to  the  charm  of  a  country  walk  ;  but 
—  and  surely  the  assertion  is  not  neces- 
sarily paradoxical  —  these  studies  ought 
not  to  be  allowed  to  disfigure  the  free- 
flowing  outline  of  the  historical  Muse,  or 
to  thicken  her  clear  utterance,  which  in 
her  higher  moods  chants  an  epic,  and  in 
her  ordinary  moods  recites  a  narrative 
which  need  not  be  drowsy. 

As  for  maxims,  we  all  of  us  have  our 
'  little  hoard  of  maxims '  wherewith  to 
preach  down  our  hearts  and  justify  any- 
thing shabby  we  may  have  done  ;  but  the 
less  we  import  their  cheap  wisdom  into 
history  the  better.  The  author  of  the  Ex- 
pansion of  England  will  probably  agree 
with  Burke  in  thinking  that  '  a  great  em- 
pire and  little  minds  go  ill  together,'  and 
so,  surely,  a  fortiori,  must  a  mighty  uni- 
verse and  any  possible  maxim.  There  have 
been  plenty  of  brave  historical  maxims  be- 
fore Professor  Seeley's,  though  only  Lord 
Bolingbroke's  has  had  the  good  luck  to  be 


208  THE  MUSE   OF  HISTORY. 

come  itself  historical.*  And  as  for  theories, 
Professor  Flint,  a  very  learned  writer,  has 
been  at  the  pains  to  enumerate  fourteen 
French  and  thirteen  German  philosophies 
of  history  current  (though  some,  I  expect, 
never  ran  either  fast  or  far)  since  the  re- 
vival of  learning. 

We  are  (are  we  not  ?)  in  these  days  in 
no  little  danger  of  being  philosophy-ridden, 
and  of  losing  our  love  for  facts  simply  as 
facts.  So  long  as  Carlyle  lived,  the  con- 
crete had  a  representative,  the  strength  of 
whose  epithets  sufficed,  if  not  to  keep  the 
philosophers  in  awe,  at  least  to  supply 
their  opponents  with  stones.  But  now  it 
is  different.  Carlyle  is  no  more  a  model 
historian  than  is  Shakspeare  a  model  dram- 
atist. The  merest  tyro  can  count  the  faults 
of  either  on  his  clumsy  fingers.  That  born 
critic,  the  late  Sir  George  Lewis,  had 
barely  completed  his  tenth  year  before  he 
was  able,  in  a  letter  to  his  mother,  to  point 
out  to  her  the  essentially  faulty  structure 

*  '  I  will  answer  you  by  quoting  what  I  have  read  some- 
where or  other,  in  Dionysius  Halicarnassensis  I  think, 
that  history  is  philosophy  teaching  by  examples.'  See 
Lord  Bolingbroke's  Second  Letter  on  the  Study  and  Use 
of  History. 


THE  MUSE   OF  HISTORY.  2OQ 

of  Hamlet,  and  many  a  duller  wit,  a  dec- 
ade or  two  later  in  his  existence,  has 
come  to  the  conclusion  that  Frederick  the 
Great  is  far  too  long.  But  whatever  were 
Carlyle's  faults,  his  historical  method  was 
superbly  naturalistic.  Have  we  a  historian 
left  us  so  honestly  possessed  as  he  was 
with  the  genuine  historical  instinct,  the 
true  enthusiasm  to  know  what  happened ; 
or  one  half  so  fond  of  a  story  for  its  own 
sake,  or  so  in  love  with  things,  not  for 
what  thsy  were,  but  simply  because  they 
were  ?  '  What  wonderful  things  are  events,' 
wrote  Lord  Beaconsfield  in  Coningsby ;  'the 
least  are  of  greater  importance  than  the 
most  sublime  and  comprehensive  specula- 
tions.' To  say  this  is  to  go  perhaps  too 
far ;  certainly  it  is  to  go  farther  than  Car- 
lyle,  who  none  the  less  was  in  sympathy 
with  the  remark;  for  he  also  worshipped 
events,  believing  as  he  did  that  but  for  the 
breath  of  God's  mouth  they  never  would 
have  been  events  at  all.  We  thus  find  him 
always  treating  even  comparatively  insig- 
nificant facts  with  a  measure  of  reverence, 
and  handling  them  lovingly,  as  does  a 
book-hunter  the  shabbiest  pamphlet  in  his 


2IO  THE  MUSE   OF  HISTORY. 

collection.  We  have  only  to  think  of  Car- 
lyle's  essay  on  the  Diamond  Necklace  to  fill 
our  minds  with  his  qualifications  for  the 
proud  office  of  the  historian.  Were  that 
inimitable  piece  of  workmanship  to  be  sub- 
mitted to  the  criticisms  of  the  new  scien- 
tific school,  we  doubt  whether  it  would  be 
so  much  as  classed,  whilst  the  celebrated 
description  of  the  night  before  the  battle 
of  Dunbar  in  Cromwell,  or  any  hundred 
scenes  from  the  French  Revolution,  would, 
we  expect,  be  catalogued  as  good  examples 
of  that  degrading  process  whereby  history 
fades  into  mere  literature. 

This  is  not  a  question,  be  it  observed, 
of  style.  What  is  called  a  picturesque 
style  is  generally  a  great  trial.  Who  was 
it  who  called  Professor  Masson's  style 
Carlyle  on  wooden  legs  ?  What  can  be 
drearier  than  when  a  plain  matter-of-fact 
writer  attempts  to  be  animated,  and  tries 
to  make  his  characters  live  by  the  easy 
but  futile  expedient  of  writing  about  them 
in  the  present  tense  ?  What  is  wanted  is 
a  passion  for  facts  ;  the  style  may  be  left 
to  take  care  of  itself.  Let  me  name  a  his- 
torian who  detested  fine  writing,  and  who 


THE  MUSE   OF  HISTORY.  211 

never  said  to  himself,  '  Go  to,  I  will  make 
a  description,'  and  who  yet  was  dominated 
by  a  love  for  facts,  whose  one  desire  al- 
ways was  to  know  what  happened,  to  dis- 
pel illusion,  and  establish  the  true  account 
—  Dr.  S.  R.  Maitland,  of  the  Lambeth  Li- 
brary, whose  volumes  entitled  The  Dark 
Ages  and  The  Reformation  are  to  history 
what  Milton's  Lycidas  is  said  to  be  to 
poetry  :  if  they  do  not  interest  you,  your 
tastes  are  not  historical. 

The  difference,  we  repeat,  is  not  of  style, 
but  of  aim.  Is  history  a  pageant  or  a  phi- 
losophy ?  That  eminent  historian,  Lord 
Macaulay,  whose  passion  for  letters  and 
for  '  mere  literature  '  ennobled  his  whole 
life,  has  expressed  himself  in  some  places, 
I  need  scarcely  add  in  a  most  forcible  man- 
ner, in  the  same  sense  as  Mr.  Morley.  In 
his  well-known  essay  on  history,  contrib- 
uted to  the  Edinburgh  Review  in  1828,  we 
find  him  writing  as  follows:  —  'Facts  are 
the  mere  dross  of  history.  It  is  from  the 
abstract  truth  which  interpenetrates  them, 
and  lies  latent  amongst  them  like  gold  in 
the  ore,  that  the  mass  derives  its  whole 
value.'  And  again:  'No  past  event  has 


212  THE  MUSE   OF  HISTORY. 

any  intrinsic  importance.  The  knowledge 
of  it  is  valuable  only  as  it  leads  us  to  form 
just  calculations  with  respect  to  the  future.' 
These  are  strong  passages ;  but  Lord  Ma- 
caulay  was  a  royal  eclectic,  and  was  quite 
out  of  sympathy  with  the  majority  of  that 
brotherhood  who  are  content  to  tone  down 
their  contradictories  to  the  dull  level  of  in- 
eptitudes. Macaulay  never  toned  down  his 
contradictories,  but,  heightening  everything 
all  round,  went  on  his  sublime  way,  rejoi- 
cing like  a  strong  man  to  run  a  race,  and 
well  knowing  that  he  could  give  anybody 
five  yards  in  fifty  and  win  easily.  It  is, 
therefore,  no  surprise  to  find  him,  in  the 
very  essay  in  which  he  speaks  so  contempt- 
uously of  facts,  laying  on  with  his  vigorous 
brush  a  celebrated  purple  patch  I  would 
gladly  transfer  to  my  own  dull  page  were 
it  not  too  long  and  too  well  known.  A 
line  or  two  taken  at  random  will  give  its 
purport :  — 

'  A  truly  great  historian  would  reclaim 
those  materials  the  novelist  has  appropri- 
ated. We  should  not  then  have  to  look 
for  the  wars  and  votes  of  the  Puritans  in 
Clarendon  and  for  their  phraseology  in  Old 


THE  MUSE   OF  HISTORY. 

Mortality,  for  one  half  of  King  James  in 
Hume  and  for  the  other  half  in  the  For- 
tunes  of  Nigel.  .  .  .  Society  would  be  shown 
from  the  highest  to  the  lowest,  from  the 
royal  cloth  of  state  to  the  den  of  the  out- 
law, from  the  throne  of  the  legate  to  the 
chimney-corner  where  the  begging  friar 
regaled  himself.  Palmers,  minstrels,  cru- 
saders, the  stately  monastery  with  the 
good  cheer  in  its  refectory,  and  the  tourna- 
ment with  the  heralds  and  ladies,  the 
trumpets  and  the  cloth  of  gold,  would  give 
truth  and  life  to  the  representation.'  It  is 
difficult  to  see  what  abstract  truth  inter- 
penetrates the  cheer  of  the  refectory,  or 
what  just  calculations  with  respect  to  the 
future  even  an  upholsterer  could  draw  from 
a  cloth,  either  of  state  or  of  gold  ;  whilst 
most  people  will  admit  that,  when  the 
brilliant  essayist  a  few  years  later  set  him- 
self to  compose  his  own  magnificent  his- 
tory, so  far  as  he  interpenetrated  it  with 
the  abstract  truths  of  Whiggism,  and  cal- 
culated that  the  future  would  be  satisfied 
with  the  first  Reform  Bill,  he  did  ill  and 
guessed  wrong. 

To  reconcile  Macaulay's  utterances  on 


214  THE  MUSE   OF  HISTORY. 

this  subject  is  beyond  my  powers,  but  of 
two  things  I  am  satisfied :  the  first  is  that, 
were  he  to  come  to  life  again,  a  good  many 
of  us  would  be  more  careful  than  we  are 
how  we  write  about  him ;  and  the  second 
is  that,  on  the  happening  of  the  same  event, 
he  would  be  found  protesting  against  the 
threatened  domination  of  all  things  by 
scientific  theory.  A  Western  American, 
who  was  once  compelled  to  spend  some 
days  in  Boston,  was  accustomed  in  after- 
life to  describe  that  seat  of  polite  learning 
to  his  horrified  companions  in  California 
as  a  city  in  whose  streets  Respectability 
stalked  unchecked.  This  is  just  what 
philosophical  theories  are  doing  amongst 
us,  and  a  decent  person  can  hardly  venture 
abroad  without  one,  though  it  does  not 
much  matter  which  one.  Everybody  is 
expected  to  have  '  a  system  of  philosophy 
with  principles  coherent,  interdependent, 
subordinate,  and  derivative,'  and  to  be  able 
to  account  for  everything,  even  for  things 
it  used  not  to  be  thought  sensible  to  be- 
lieve in,  like  ghosts  and  haunted  houses. 
Keats  remarks  in  one  of  his  letters  with 
great  admiration  upon  what  he  christens 


THE  MUSE   OF  HISTORY.  215 

Shakspeare's  'negative  capability,'  mean- 
ing thereby  Shakspeare's  habit  of  com- 
plaisant observation  from  outside  of  theory, 
and  his  keen  enjoyment  of  the  unexplained 
facts  of  life.  He  did  not  pour  himself  out 
in  every  strife.  We  have  but  little  of  this 
negative  capability.  The  ruddy  qualities 
of  delightfulness,  of  pleasantness,  are  all 
'  sicklied  o'er  with  the  pale  cast  of  thought.' 
The  varied  elements  of  life  —  the 

'  Murmur  of  living, 
Stir  of  existence, 
Soul  of  the  world  ! ' 

seem  to  be  fading  from  literature.  Pure 
literary  enthusiasm  sheds  but  few  rays. 
To  be  lively  is  to  be  flippant,  and  epigram 
is  dubbed  paradox. 

That  many  people  appear  to  like  a  drab- 
coloured  world  hung  round  with  dusky 
shreds  of  philosophy  is  sufficiently  ob- 
vious. These  persons  find  any  relaxation 
they  may  require  from  a  too  severe  course 
of  theories,  religious,  political,  social,  or 
now,  alas !  historical,  in  the  novels  of 
Mr.  W.  D.  Howells,  an  American  gentle- 
man who  has  not  been  allowed  to  forget 
that  he  once  asserted  of  fiction  what  Pro- 


2l6  THE  MUSE   OF  HISTORY. 

fessor  Seeley  would  be  glad  to  be  able  to 
assert  of  history,  that  the  drowsy  spell  of 
narrative  has  been  broken.  We  are  to 
look  for  no  more  Sir  Walters,  no  more 
Thackerays,  no  more  Dickens.  The  stories 
have  all  been  told.  Plots  are  exploded. 
Incident  is  over.  In  moods  of  dejection 
these  dark  sayings  seemed  only  too  true. 
Shakspeare's  saddest  of  sad  lines  rose  to 
one's  lips  — 

'  My  grief  lies  onward  and  my  joy  behind.' 

Behind  us  are  Ivanhce  and  Guy  Mannering, 
Pendennis  and  The  Virginians,  Pecksniff 
and  Micawber.  In  front  of  us  stretch  a 
never-ending  series,  a  dreary  vista  of  Fore- 
gone Conclusions,  Counterfeit  Presentments, 
and  Undiscovered  Countries.  But  the  dark- 
est watch  of  the  night  is  the  one  before 
the  dawn,  and  relief  is  often  nearest  us 
when  we  least  expect  it.  All  this  gloomy 
nonsense  was  suddenly  dispelled,  and  the 
fact  that  really  and  truly,  and  behind  this 
philosophical  arras,  we  were  all  inwardly 
ravening  for  stories  was  most  satisfactorily 
established  by  the  incontinent  manner  in 
which  we  flung  ourselves  into  the  arms  of 


THE  MUSE   OF  HISTORY.  21 7 

Mr.  Robert  Louis  Stevenson,  to  whom  we 
could  almost  have  raised  a  statue  in  the 
market-place  for  having  written  Treasure 
Island. 

But  to  return  to  history.  The  interests 
of  our  poor  human  life,  which  seems  to  be- 
come duller  every  day,  require  that  the 
fields  of  history  should  be  kept  for  ever 
unenclosed,  and  be  a  free  breathing-place 
for  a  pallid  population  well-nigh  stifled  with 
the  fumes  of  philosophy. 

Were  we,  imaginatively,  to  propel  our- 
selves forward  to  the  middle  of  the  next 
century,  and  to  fancy  a  well-equipped  his- 
torian armed  with  the  digested  learning  of 
Gibbon,  endowed  with  the  eye  of  Carlyle, 
and  say  one-fifteenth  of  his  humour  (even 
then  a  dangerous  allotment  in  a  dull  world), 
the  moral  gravity  of  Dr.  Arnold,  the  crit- 
ical sympathy  of  Ste-Beuve,  and  the  style 
of  Dr.  Newman,  approaching  the  period 
through  which  we  have  lived,  should  we 
desire  this  talented  mortal  to  encumber 
himself  with  a  theory  into  which  to  thrust 
all  our  doings  as  we  toss  clothes  into  a 
portmanteau  ;  to  see  himself  to  extract  the 
essence  of  some  new  political  philosophy, 


2l8  THE  MUSE   OF  HISTORY. 

capable  of  being  applied  to  the  practical 
politics  of  his  own  day,  or  to  busy  himself 
with  problems  or  economics  ?  To  us  per- 
sonally, of  course,  it  is  a  matter  of  indiffer- 
ence how  the  historians  of  the  twentieth 
century  conduct  themselves,  but  ought  not 
our  altruism  to  bear  the  strain  of  a  hope 
that  at  least  one  of  the  band  may  avoid  all 
these  things,  and,  leaving  political  philos- 
ophy to  the  political  philosopher  and  polit- 
ical economy  to  the  political  economist,  re- 
member that  the  first,  if  not  the  last,  duty 
of  the  historian  is  to  narrate,  to  supply  the 
text  not  the  comment,  the  subject  not  the 
sermon,  and  proceed  to  tell  our  grandchil- 
dren and  remoter  issue  the  story  of  our 
lives  ?  The  clash  of  arms  will  resound 
through  his  pages  as  musically  as  ever  it 
does  through  those  of  the  elder  historians 
as  he  tells  of  the  encounter  between  the 
Northern  and  Southern  States  of  America, 
in  which  Right  and  Might,  those  great 
twin-brethren,  fought  side  by  side  ;  but 
Romance,  that  ancient  parasite,  clung  af- 
fectionately with  her  tendril-hands  to  the 
mouldering  walls  of  an  ancient  wrong,  thus 
enabling  the  historian,  whilst  awarding  the 


THE  MUSE   OF  HISTORY.  2IQ 

victor's  palm  to  General  Grant, .to  write 
kindly  of  the  lost  cause,  dear  to  the  heart 
of  a  nobler  and  more  chivalrous  man,  ^ Gen- 
eral Lee,  of  the  Virginian  army.  And 
again,  is  it  not  almost  possible  to  envy  the 
historian  to  whom  will  belong  the  task  of 
writing  with  full  information,  and  all  the 
advantage  of  the  true  historic  distance,  the 
history  of  that  series  of  struggles  and  hero- 
isms, of  plots  and  counter-plots,  of  crimes 
and  counter-crimes,  resulting  in  the  free- 
dom of  Italy,  and  of  telling  to  a  world, 
eager  to  listen,  the  life  -  story  of  Joseph 
Mazzini  ? 

'  Of  God  nor  man  was  ever  this  thing  said, 

That  he  could  give 
Life  back  to  her  who  gave  him,  whence  his  dead 

Mother  might  live. 
But  this  man  found  his  mother  dead  and  slain, 

With  fast  sealed  eyes, 
And  bade  the  dead  rise  up  and  live  again, 

And  she  did  rise.' 

Nor  will  our  imaginary  historian  be  un- 
mindful of  Cavour,  or  fail  to  thrill  his  read- 
ers by  telling  them  how,  when  the  great 
Italian  statesman,  with  many  sins  upon  his 
conscience,  lay  in  the  very  grasp  of  death, 
he  interrupted  the  priests,  busy  at  their 


22'0  THE  MUSE   OF  HISTORY. 

work  of  intercession,  almost  roughly,  with 
the  exclamation,  'Pray  not  for  me.  Pray 
for  Italy  ! '  whilst  if  he  be  one  who  has  a 
turn  for  that  ironical  pastime,  the  dissection 
of  a  king,  the  curious  character,  and  mud- 
dle of  motives,  calling  itself  Carlo  Alberto 
will  afford  him  material  for  at  least  two 
paragraphs  of  subtle  interest.  Lastly,  if 
our  historian  is  ambitious  of  a  larger  canvas 
and  of  deeper  colours,  what  is  there  to  pre- 
vent him,  bracing  himself  to  the  task,  — 

'  As  when  some  mighty  painter  dips 
His  pencil  in  the  hues  of  earthquake  and  eclipse,' 

from  writing  the  epitaph  of  the  Napoleonic 
legend  ?  - 

But  all  this  time  I  hear  Professor  Seeley 
whispering  in  my  ear,  '  What  is  this  but  the 
old  literary  groove  leading  to  no  trustworthy 
knowledge  ? '  If  by  trustworthy  knowledge 
is  meant  demonstrable  conclusions,  capable 
of  being  expressed  in  terms  at  once  exact 
and  final,  trustworthy  knowledge  is  not  to 
be  gained  from  the  witness  of  history, 
whose  testimony  none  the  less  must  be  re- 
ceived, weighed,  and  taken  into  account. 
Truly  observes  Carlyle :  '  If  history  is 
philosophy  teaching  by  examples,  the  writer 


THE  MUSE   OF  HISTORY.  221 

fitted  to  compose  history  is  hitherto  an  un- 
known man.  Better  were  it  that  mere 
earthly  historians  should  lower  such  preten- 
sions, and,  aiming  only  at  some  picture  of 
the  thing  acted,  which  picture  itself  will  be 
but  a  poor  approximation,  leave  the  inscru- 
table purport  of  them  an  acknowledged 
secret.'  '  Some  picture  of  the  thing  acted.' 
Here  we  behold  the  task  of  the  historian  ; 
nor  is  it  an  idle,  fruitless  task.  Science 
is  not  the  only,  or  the  chief  source  of  knowl- 
edge. The  Iliad,  Shakspeare's  plays,  have 
taught  the  world  more  than  the  Politics 
of  Aristotle  or  the  Novum  Organum  of 
Bacon. 

Facts  are  not  the  dross  of  history,  but 
the  true  metal,  and  the  historian  is  a 
worker  in  that  metal.  He  has  nothing  to 
do  with  abstract  truth,  or  with  practical 
'politics,  or  with  forecasts  of  the  future.  A 
worker  in  metal*  he  is,  and  has  certainly 
plenty  of  what  .Lord  Bacon  used  to  call 
'stuff  '  to  work  upon ;  but  if  he  is  to  be  a 
great  historian,  and  not  a  mere  chronicler, 
he  must  be  an  artist  as  well  as  an  artisan, 
and  have  something  of  the  spirit  which  an- 
imated such  a  man  as  Francesco  Francia 


222  THE  MUSE  OF  HISTORY. 

of  Bologna,  now  only  famous  as  a  painter, 
but  in  his  own  day  equally  celebrated  as  a 
worker  in  gold,  and  whose  practice  it  was 
to  sign  his  pictures  with  the  word  Gold- 
smith after  his  name,  whilst  he  engraved 
Painter  on  his  golden  crucifixes. 

The  true  historian,  therefore,  seeking  to 
compose  a  true  picture  of  the  thing  acted, 
must  collect  facts,  select  facts,  and  com- 
bine facts.  Methods  will  differ,  styles  will 
differ.  Nobody  ever  does  anything  exactly 
like  anybody  else ;  but  the  end  in  view  is 
generally  the  same,  and  the  historian's  end 
is  truthful  narration.  Maxims  he  will  have, 
if  he  is  wise,  never  a  one  ;  and  as  for  a 
moral,  if  he  tell  his  story  well,  it  will  need 
none ;  if  he  tell  it  ill,  it  will  deserve  none. 

The  stream  of  narrative  flowing  swiftly, 
as  it  does,  over  the  jagged  rocks  of  human 
destiny  must  often  be  turbulent  and  tossed  ; 
it  is,  therefore,  all  the  more  the  duty  of 
every  good  citizen  to  keep  it  as  undefiled 
as  possible,  and  to  do  what  in  him  lies  to 
prevent  peripatetic  philosophers  on  the 
banks  from  throwing  their  theories  into  it, 
either  dead  ones  to  decay,  or  living  ones 
to  drown.  Let  the  philosophers  ventilate 


THE  MUSE   OF  HISTORY.  22$ 

their  theories,  construct  their  blow-holes, 
extract  their  essences,  discuss  their  max- 
ims, and  point  their  morals  as  much  as 
they  will ;  but  let  them  do  so  apart.  His- 
tory must  not  lose  her  Muse,  or  '  take  to 
her  bosom  doubts,  queries,  essays,  disser- 
tations, some  of  which  ought  to  go  before 
her,  some  to  follow,  and  all  to  stand  apart.' 
Let  us  at  all  events  secure  our  narrative 
first  —  sermons  and  philosophy  the  day 
after. 


CHARLES   LAMB.* 

MR.  WALTER  BAGEHOT  preferred  Hazlitt 
to  Lamb,  reckoning  the  former  much  the 
greater  writer.  The  preferences  of  such  a 
man  as  Bagehot  are  not  to  be  lightly  dis- 
regarded, least  of  all  when  their  sincerity 
is  vouched  for,  as  in  the  present  case,  by 
half  a  hundred  quotations  from  the  favoured 
author.  Certainly  no  writer  repays  a  liter- 
ary man's  devotion  better  than  Hazlitt,  of 
whose  twenty  seldom  read  volumes  hardly 
a  page  but  glitters  with  quotable  matter ; 
the  true  ore,  to  be  had  for  the  cost  of  cart- 
age. You  may  live  like  a  gentleman  for  a 
twelvemonth  on  Hazlitt's  ideas.  Opinions, 
no  doubt,  differ  as  to  how  many  quotations 
a  writer  is  entitled  to,  but,  for  my  part,  I 
like  to  see  an  author  leap-frog  into  his 
subject  over  the  back  of  a  brother. 

*  The  Works  of  Charles  Lamb.  Edited,  with  notes 
and  introduction,  by  the  Rev.  Alfred  Ainger.  Three 
volumes.  London:  1883-5. 


CHARLES  LAMB.  22$ 

I  do  not  remember  whether  Bagehot  has 
anywhere  given  his  reasons  for  his  pref- 
erence —  the  open  avowal  whereof  drove 
Crabb  Robinson  well-nigh  distracted  ;  and 
it  is  always  rash  to  find  reasons  for  a  faith 
you  do  not  share ;  but  probably  they  par- 
took of  the  nature  of  a  complaint  that 
Elia's  treatment  of  men  and  things  (mean- 
ing by  things,  books)  is  often  fantastical, 
unreal,  even  a  shade  insincere ;  whilst  Haz- 
litt  always  at  least  aims  at  the  centre, 
whether  he  hits  it  or  not.  Lamb  dances 
round  a  subject ;  Hazlitt  grapples  with  it. 
So  far  as  Hazlitt  is  concerned,  doubtless 
this  is  so ;  his  literary  method  seems  to 
realise  the  agreeable  aspiration  of  Mr. 
Browning's  Italian  in  England:  — 

'  I  would  grasp  Metternich  until 
I  felt  his  wet  red  throat  distil 
In  blood  thro'  these  two  hands.' 

Hazlitt  is  always  grasping  some  Metternich. 
He  said  himself  that  Lamb's  talk  was  like 
snap-dragon,  and  his  own  'not  very  much 
unlike  a  game  of  nine-pins.'  Lamb,  writ- 
ing to  him  on  one  occasion  about  his  son, 
wishes  the  little  fellow  a  '  smoother  head 
of  hair  and  somewhat  of  a  better  temper 


226  CHARLES  LAMB. 

than  his  father ; '  and  the  pleasant  words 
seem  to  call  back  from  the  past  the  stormy 
figure  of  the  man  who  loved  art,  literature, 
and  the  drama  with  a  consuming  passion, 
who  has  described  books  and  plays,  au- 
thors and  actors,  with  a  fiery  enthusiasm 
and  reality  quite  unsurpassable,  and  who 
yet,  neither  living  nor  dead,  has  received 
his  due  meed  of  praise.  Men  still  continue 
to  hold  aloof  from  Hazlitt,  his  shaggy  head 
and  fierce  scowling  temper  still  seem  to 
terrorise,  and  his  very  books,  telling  us 
though  they  do  about  all  things  most  de- 
lightful—  poems,  pictures,  and  the  cheerful 
playhouse  —  frown  upon  us  from  their  up- 
per shelf.  From  this  it  appears  that  would 
a  genius  ensure  for  himself  immortality, 
he  must  brush  his  hair  and  keep  his  tem- 
per ;  but  alas  !  how  seldom  can  he  be  per- 
suaded to  do  either.  Charles  Lamb  did 
both  ;  and  the  years  as  they  roll  do  but 
swell  the  rich  revenues  of  his  praise. 

Lamb's  popularity  shows  no  sign  of 
waning.  Even  that  most  extraordinary 
compound,  the  rising  generation  of  read- 
ers, whose  taste  in  literature  is  as  erratic 
as  it  is  pronounced  ;  who  have  never  heard 


CHARLES  LAMB.  22/ 

of  James  Thomson  who  sang  The  Seasons 
(including  the  pleasant  episode  of  Musidora 
bathing),  but  understand  by  any  reference 
to  that  name  only  the  striking  author  of 
The  City  of  Dreadful  Night ;  even  these 
wayward  folk  —  the  dogs  of  whose  criti- 
cism, not  yet  full  grown,  will,  when  let 
loose,  as  some  day  they  must  be,  cry 
'havoc'  amongst  established  reputations 
—  read  their  Lamb,  letters  as  well  as  es- 
says, with  laughter  and  with  love. 

If  it  be  really  seriously  urged  against 
Lamb  as  an  author  that  he  is  fantastical 
and  artistically  artificial,  it  must  be  owned 
he  is  so.  His  humour,  exquisite  as  it  is,  is 
modish.  It  may  not  be  for  all  markets. 
How  it  affected  the  Scottish  Thersites  we 
know  only  too  well,  —  that  dour  spirit  re- 
quired more  potent  draughts  to  make  him 
forget  his  misery  and  laugh.  It  took  Swift 
or  Smollett  to  move  his  mirth,  which  was 
always,  three  parts  of  it,  derision.  Lamb's 
elaborateness,  what  he  himself  calls  his  af- 
fected array  of  antique  modes  and  phrases, 
is  sometimes  overlooked  in  these  strange 
days,  when  it  is  thought  better  to  read  about 
an  author  than  to  read  him.  To  read  aloud 


228  CHARLES  LAMB. 

the  Praise  of  Chimney  Sweepers  without 
stumbling,  or  halting,  not  to  say  mispro-. 
nouncing,  and  to  set  in  motion  every  one 
of  its  carefully-swung  sentences,  is  a  very 
pretty  feat  in  elocution,  for  there  is  not 
what  can  be  called  a  natural  sentence  in 
it  from  beginning  to  end.  Many  people 
have  not  patience  for  this  sort  of  thing ; 
they  like  to  laugh  and  move  on.  Other 
people  again  like  an  essay  to  be  about 
something  really  important,  and  to  con- 
duct them  to  conclusions  they  deem  worth 
carrying  away.  Lamb's  views  about  in- 
discriminate almsgiving,  so  far  as  these 
can  be  extracted  from  his  paper  On  the 
Decay  of  Beggars  in  the  Metropolis,  are 
unsound,  whilst  there  are  at  least  three 
ladies  still  living  (in  Brighton)  quite  re- 
spectably on  their  means,  who  consider 
the  essay  entitled  A  Bachelor  s  Complaint 
of  the  Behaviour  of  Married  People  im- 
proper. But,  as  a  rule,  Lamb's  essays 
are  neither  unsound  nor  improper ;  none 
the  less  they  are,  in  the  judgment  of  some, 
things  of  naught  —  not  only  lacking,  as 
Southey  complained  they  did,  '  sound  re- 
ligious feeling,'  but  everything  else  really 
worthy  of  attention. 


CHARLES  LAMB. 

To  discuss  such  congenital  differences 
of  taste  is  idle  ;  but  it  is  not  idle  to  observe 
that  when  Lamb  is  read,  as  he  surely  de- 
serves to  be,  as  a  whole  —  letters  and  po- 
ems no  less  than  essays  —  these  notes  of 
fantasy  and  artificiality  no  longer  domi- 
nate. The  man  Charles  Lamb  was  far 
more  real,  far  more  serious  despite  his 
jesting,  more  self-contained  and  self-re- 
strained than  Hazlitt,  who  wasted  his  life 
in  the  pursuit  of  the  veriest  will-o'-the- 
wisps  that  ever  danced  over  the  most  mi- 
asmatic of  swamps,  who  was  never  his  own 
man,  and  who  died,  like  Brian  de  Bois  Gil- 
bert, '  the  victim  of  contending  passions.' 
It  should  never  be  forgotten  that  Lamb's 
vocation  was  his  life.  Literature  was  but 
his  by-play,  his  avocation  in  the  true  sense 
of  that  much-abused  word.  He  was  not 
a  fisherman  but  an  angler  in  the  lake  of 
letters  ;  an  author  by  chance  and  on  the 
sly.  He  had  a  right  to  disport  himself  on 
paper,  to  play  the  frolic  with  his  own  fan- 
cies, to  give  the  decalogue  the  slip,  whose 
life  was  made  up  of  the  sternest  stuff,  of 
self-sacrifice,  devotion,  honesty,  and  good 
sense. 


230  CHARLES  LAMB. 

Lamb's  letters  from  first  to  last  are  full 
of  the  philosophy  of  life  ;  he  was  as  sen- 
sible a  man  as  Dr.  Johnson.  One  grows 
sick  of  the  expressions,  '  poor  Charles 
Lamb,'  'gentle  Charles  Lamb,'  as  if  he 
were  one  of  those  grown-up  children  of 
the  Leigh  Hunt  type,  who  are  perpetually 
begging  and  borrowing  through  the  round 
of  every  man's  acquaintance.  Charles  Lamb 
earned  his  own  living,  paid  his  own  way,  was 
the  helper,  not  the  helped  ;  a  man  who  was 
beholden  to  no  one,  who  always  came  with 
gifts  in  his  hand,  a  shrewd  man  capable  of 
advice,  strong  in  council.  Poor  Lamb  in- 
deed !  Poor  Coleridge,  robbed  of  his  will ; 
poor  Wordsworth,  devoured  by  his  own  ego  ; 
poor  Southey,  writing  his  tomes  and  deem- 
ing himself  a  classic ;  poor  Carlyle,  with  his 
nine  volumes  of  memoirs,  where  he 

1  Lies  like  a  hedgehog  rolled  up  the  wrong  way, 
Tormenting  himself  with  his  prickles  '  — 

call  these  men  poor,  if  you  feel  it  decent  to 
do  so,  but  not  Lamb,  who  was  rich  in  all 
that  makes  life  valuable  or  memory  sweet. 
But  he  used  to  get  drunk.  This  explains  all. 
Be  untruthful,  unfaithful,  unkind  ;  darken 
the  lives  of  all  who  have  to  live  under  your 


CHARLES  LAMB. 

shadow,  rob  youth  of  joy,  take  peace  from 
age,  live  unsought  for,  die  unmourned,  — 
and  remaining  sober  you  will  escape  the 
curse  of  men's  pity,  and  be  spoken  of  as  a 
worthy  person.  But  if  ever,  amidst  what 
Burns  called  '  social  noise,'  you  so  far  forget 
yourself  as  to  get  drunk,  think  not  to  plead 
2  spotless  life  spent  with  those  for  whom 
you  have  laboured  and  saved  ;  talk  not  of 
the  love  of  friends  or  of  help  given  to  the 
needy ;  least  of  all  make  reference  to  a 
noble  self-sacrifice  passing  the  love  of  wo- 
men, for  all  will  avail  you  nothing.  You. 
get  drunk,  —  and  the  heartless  and  the 
selfish  and  the  lewd  crave  the  privilege 
of  pitying  you,  and  receiving  your  name 
with  an  odious  smile.  It  is  really  too  bad. 
The  completion  of  Mr.  Ainger's  edition 
of  Lamb's  works  deserves  a  word  of  com- 
memoration. In  our  judgment  it  is  all  an 
edition  of  Lamb's  works  should  be.  Upon 
the  vexed  question,  nowadays  so  much  agi- 
tated, whether  an  editor  is  to  be  allowed 
any  discretion  in  the  exclusion  from  his 
edition  of  the  rinsings  of  his  author's  desk, 
we  side  with  Mr.  Ainger,  and  think  more 
nobly  of  the  editor  than  to  deny  him  such 


232  CHARLES  LAMB. 

a  discretion.  An  editor  is  not  a  sweep, 
and,  by  the  love  he  bears  the  author  whose 
fame  he  seeks  to  spread  abroad,  it  is  his 
duty  to  exclude  what  he  believes  does  not 
bear  the  due  impress  of  the  author's  mind. 
No  doubt  as  a  rule  editors  have  no  discre- 
tion to  be  trusted ;  but  happily  Mr.  Ainger 
has  plenty,  and  most  sincerely  do  we  thank 
him  for  withholding  from  us  A  Vision  of 
Horns  and  The  Pawnbroker  s  Daughter. 
Boldly  to  assert,  as  some  are  found  to  do, 
that  the  editor  of  a  master  of  style  has  no 
choice  but  to  reprint  the  scraps  or  notelets 
that  a  misdirected  energy  may  succeed  in 
disinterring  from  the  grave  the  writer  had 
dug  for  them,  is  to  fail  to  grasp  the  dis- 
tinction between  a  collector  of  curios  and  a 
lover  of  books.  But  this  policy  of  exclu- 
sion is  no  doubt  a  perilous  one.  Like  the 
Irish  members,  or  Mark  Antony's  wife  — 
the  'shrill-toned  Fulvia' — the  missing  es- 
says are  'good,  being  gone.'  Surely,  so 
we  are  inclined  to  grumble,  the  taste  was 
severe  that  led  Mr.  Ainger  to  dismiss  Juke 
Judkins.  We  are  not,  indeed,  prepared  to 
say  that  Judkins  has  been  wrongfully  dis- 
missed, or  that  he  has  any  right  of  action 


CHARLES  LA  AID.  233 

against  Mr.  Ainger,  but  we  could  have  put 
up  better  with  his  presence  than  his  ab- 
sence. 

Mr.  Ainger's  introduction  to  the  Essays 
of  Elia  is  admirable ;  here  is  a  bit  of 
it:  — 

'  Another  feature  of  Lamb's  style  is  its 
allusiveness.  He  is  rich  in  quotations,  and 
in  my  notes  I  have  succeeded  in  tracing 
most  of  them  to  their  source,  a  matter  of 
some  difficulty  in  Lamb's  case,  for  his  in- 
accuracy is  all  but  perverse.  But  besides 
those  avowedly  introduced  as  such,  his 
style  is  full  of  quotations  held,  if  the  ex- 
pression may  be  allowed,  in  solution.  One 
feels,  rather  than  recognises,  that  a  phrase 
or  idiom  or  turn  of  expression  is  an  echo 
of  something  that  one  has  heard  or  read 
before.  Yet  such  is  the  use  made  of  the 
material,  that  a  charm  is  added  by  the  very 
fact  that  we  are  thus  continually  renewing 
our  experience  of  an  older  day.  This  style 
becomes  aromatic,  like  the  perfume  of 
faded  rose-leaves  in  a  china  jar.  With 
such  allusiveness  as  this  I  need  not  say 
that  I  have  not  meddled  in  my  notes  ;  its 
whole  charm  lies  in  recognising  it  for  our- 


234  '       CHARLES  LAMB. 

selves.  The  "prosperity"  of  an  allusion, 
as  of  a  jest,  "lies  in  the  ear  of  him  that 
hears  it,"  and  it  were  doing  a  poor  service 
to  Lamb  or  his  readers  to  draw  out  and  ar- 
range in  order  the  threads  he  has  wrought 
into  the  very  fabric  of  his  English.' 

Then  Mr.  Ainger's  notes  are  not  med- 
dlesome notes,  but  truly  explanatory  ones, 
genuine  aids  to  enjoyment.  Lamb  needs 
notes,  and  yet  the  task  of  adding  them  to  a 
structure  so  fine  and  of  such  nicely  studied 
proportions  is  a  difficult  one  ;  it  is  like 
building  a  tool-house  against  La  Sainte 
Chapelle.  Deftly  has  Mr.  Ainger  inserted 
his  notes,  and  capital  reading  do  they 
make  ;  they  tell  us  all  we  ought  to  want  to 
know.  He  is  no  true  lover  of  Elia  who 
does  not  care  to  know  who  the  "  Distant 

Correspondent "  was.    And  Barbara  S . 

'  It  was  not  much  that  Barbara  had  to 
claim.'  No,  dear  child  !  it  was  not  —  '  a 
bare  half-guinea  ; '  but  you  are  surely  also 
entitled  to  be  known  to  us  by  your  real 
name.  When  Lamb  tells  us  Barbara's 
maiden  name  was  Street,  and  that  she  was 
three  times  married  —  first  to  a  Mr.  Dan- 
cer, then  to  a  Mr.  Barry,  and  finally  to  a 


CHARLES  LAMB.  2$$ 

Mr.  Crawford,  whose  widow  she  was  when 
he  first  knew  her  —  he  is  telling  us  things 
that  were  not,  for  the  true  Barbara  died  a 
spinster,  and  was  born  a  Kelly. 

Mr.  Ainger,  as  was  to  be  expected,  has 
a  full,  instructive  note  anent  the  Old 
Benchers  of  the  Inner  Temple.  Some 
hasty  editors,  with  a  sorrowfully  large  ex- 
perience of  Lamb's  unblushing  fictions  and 
Defoe-like  falsehoods,  and  who,  perhaps, 
have  wasted  good  hours  trying  to  find  out 
all  about  Miss  Barbara's  third  husband, 
have  sometimes  assumed  that  at  all  events 
most  of  the  names  mentioned  by  Lamb  in 
his  immortal  essay  on  the  Benchers  are 
fictitious.  Mr.  Ainger,  however,  assures 
us  that  the  fact  is  otherwise.  Jekyl,  Cov- 
entry, Pierson,  Parton,  Read,  Wharry, 
Jackson,  and  Mingay,  no  less  than  *  un- 
ruffled Samuel  Salt,'  were  all  real  persons, 
and  were  called  to  the  Bench  of  the  Hon- 
ourable Society  by  those  very  names.  One 
mistake,  indeed,  Lamb  makes  —  he  writes 
of  Mr.  Twopenny  as  if  he  had  been  a 
Bencher.  Now  there  never  yet  was  a 
Bencher  of  the  name  of  Twopenny  ;  though 
the  mistake  is  easily  accounted  for.  There 


236  CHARLES  LAMB. 

was  a  Mr.  Twopenny,  a  very  thin  man  too, 
just  as  Lamb  described  him,  who  lived  in 
the  Temple  ;  but  he  was  not  a  Bencher, 
he  was  not  even  a  barrister  ;  he  was  a 
much  better  thing,  namely,  stockbroker  to 
the  Bank  of  England.  The  holding  of  this 
office,  which  Mr.  Ainger  rightly  calls  im- 
portant, doubtless  accounts  for  Twopenny's 
constant  good-humour  and  felicitous  jest- 
ing about  his  own  person.  A  man  who 
has  a  snug  berth  other  people  want  feels 
free  to  crack  such  jokes. 

Of  the  contents  of  these  three  volumes 
we  can  say  deliberately  what  Dr.  Johnson 
said,  surely  in  his  haste,  of  Baxter's  three 
hundred  works,  '  Read  them  all,  they  are 
all  good.'  Do  not  be  content  with  the 
essays  alone.  It  is  shabby  treatment  of 
an  author  who  has  given  you  pleasure  to 
leave  him  half  unread  ;  it  is  nearly  as  bad 
as  keeping  a  friend  waiting.  Anyhow, 
read  Mrs.  Leicester's  School ;  it  is  nearly 
all  Mary  Lamb's,  but  the  more  you  like  it 
on  that  account  the  better  pleased  her 
brother  would  have  been. 

We  are  especially  glad  to  notice  that 
Mr.  Ainger  holds  us  out  hopes  of  an 


CHARLES  LAMB. 

edition,  uniform  with  the  works,  of  the 
letters  of  Charles  Lamb.  Until  he  has 
given  us  these,  also  with  notes,  his  pious 
labours  are  incomplete.  Lamb's  letters 
are  not  only  the  best  text  of  his  life,  but 
the  best  comment  upon  it.  They  reveal 
all  the  heroism  of  the  man  and  all  the  cun- 
ning of  the  author;  they  do  the  reader 
good  by  stealth.  Let  us  have  them  speed- 
ily, so  that  honest  men  may  have  in  their 
houses  a  complete  edition  of  at  least  one 
author  of  whom  they  can  truthfully  say, 
that  they  never  know  whether  they  most 
admire  the  writer  or  love  the  man. 


EMERSON. 

THERE  are  men  whose  charm  is  in  their 
entirety.  Their  words  occasionally  utter 
what  their  looks  invariably  express.  We 
read  their  thoughts  by  the  light  of  their 
smiles.  Not  to  see  and  hear  these  men  is 
not  to  know  them,  and  criticism  without 
personal  knowledge  is  in  their  case  mutila- 
tion. Those  who  did  know  them  listen 
in  despair  to  the  half-hearted  praise  and 
clumsy  disparagement  of  critical  strangers, 
and  are  apt  to  exclaim,  as  did  the  younger 
Pitt,  when  some  extraneous  person  was  ex- 
pressing wonder  at  the  enormous  reputa- 
tion of  Fox,  *  Ah !  you  have  never  been 
under  the  wand  of  the  magician.' 

Of  such  was  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson. 
When  we  find  so  cool-brained  a  critic  as 
Mr.  Lowell  writing  and  quoting  thus  of 
Emerson  :  — 

'Those  who  heard  him  while  their  na- 


EMERSON.  239 

Hv-c^-j 

tures  were  yet  plastic,  and  then  mental 
nerves  trembled  under  the  slightest  breath 
of  divine  air,  will  never  cease  to  feel  and 
say:  — 

• "  Was  never  eye  did  see  that  face, 

Was  never  ear  did  hear  that  tongue, 
Was  never  mind  did  mind  his  grace 

That  ever  thought  the  travail  long ; 
But  eyes,  and  ears,  and  every  thought 
Were  with  his  sweet  perfections  caught;"  ' 

we  recognise  at  once  that  the  sooner  we 
take  off  our  shoes  the  better,  for  that  the 
ground  upon  which  we  are  standing  is  holy. 
How  can  we  sufficiently  honour  the  men 
who,  in  this  secular,  work-a-day  world,  ha- 
bitually breathe 

'  An  ampler  ether,  a  diviner  air,' 

than  ours  ! 

But  testimony  of  this  kind,  conclusive  as 
it  is  upon  the  question  of  Emerson's  per- 
sonal influence,  will  not  always  be  admissi- 
ble in  support  of  his  claims  as  an  author. 
In  the  long  run  an  author's  only  witnesses 
are  his  own  books. 

In  Dr.  Holmes's  estimate  of  Emerson's 
books  every  one  must  wish  to  concur.* 

*  See  Life  of  Emerson,  by  O.  W.  Holmes. 


24O  EMERSON. 

These  are  not  the  days,  nor  is  this  dry  and 
thirsty  land  of  ours  the  place,  when  or 
where  we  can  afford  to  pass  by  any  well  of 
spiritual  influence.  It  is  matter,  therefore, 
for  rejoicing  that,  in  the  opinion  of  so  many 
good  judges,  Emerson's  well  can  never  be 
choked  up.  His  essays,  so  at  least  we  are 
told  by  no  less  a  critic  than  Mr.  Arnold, 
are  the  most  valuable  prose  contributions 
to  English  literature  of  the  century ;  his 
letters  to  Mr.  Carlyle  carried  into  all  our 
homes  the  charm  of  a  most  delightful  per- 
sonality ;  the  quaint  melody  of  his  poems 
abides  in  many  ears.  He  would,  indeed, 
be  a  churl  who  grudged  Emerson  his  fame. 

But  when  we  are  considering  a  writer  so 
full  of  intelligence  as  Emerson  —  one  so 
remote  and  detached  from  the  world's  blus- 
ter and  brag  —  it  is  especially  incumbent 
upon  us  to  charge  our  own  language  with 
intelligence,  and  to  make  sure  that  what 
we  say  is  at  least  truth  for  us. 

Were  we  at  liberty  to  agree  with  Dr. 
Holmes,  in  his  unmeasured  praise  —  did 
we,  in  short,  find  Emerson  full  of  inspira- 
tion—  our  task  would  be  as  easy  as*  it 
would  be  pleasant ;  but  not  entirely  agree- 


EMERSON.  241 

ing  with  Dr.  Holmes,  and  somehow  miss- 
ing the  inspiration,  the  difficulty  we  began 
by  mentioning  presses  heavily  upon  us. 

Pleasant  reading  as  the  introductory 
thirty-five  pages  of  Dr.  Holmes's  book 
make,  we  doubt  the  wisdom  of  so  very 
sketchy  an  account  of  Emerson's  lineage 
and  intellectual  environment.  Attracted 
towards  Emerson  everybody  must  be;  but 
there  are  many  who  have  never  been  able 
to  get  quit  of  an  uneasy  fear  as  to  his 
'staying  power.'  He  has  seemed  to  some 
of  us  a  little  thin  and  vague.  A  really 
great  author  dissipates  all  such  fears. 
Read  a  page  and  they  are  gone.  To  in- 
quire after  the  intellectual  health  of  such 
a  one  would  be  an  impertinence.  Emer- 
son hardly  succeeds  in  inspiring  this  con- 
fidence, but  is  more  like  a  clever  invalid 
who  says,  and  is  encouraged  by  his  friends 
to  say,  brilliant  things,  but  of  whom  it 
would  be  cruel  to  expect  prolonged  men- 
tal exertion.  A  man,  he  himself  has  said, 
'  should  give  us  a  sense  of  mass.'  He  per- 
haps does  not  do  so.  This  gloomy  and 
possibly  distorted  view  is  fostered  rather 
than  discouraged  by  Dr.  Holmes's  intro- 


242  EMERSON. 

ductory  pages  about  Boston  life  and  intel- 
lect. It  does  not  seem  to  have  been  a 
very  strong  place.  We  lack  performance. 
It  is  of  small  avail  to  write,  as  Dr.  Holmes 
does,  about  'brilliant  circles,'  and  'literary 
luminaries,'  and  then  to  pass  on,  and  leave 
the  circles  circulating  and  the  luminaries 
shining  in  vacua.  We  want  to  know  how 
they  were  .brilliant,  and  what  they  illu- 
minated. If  you  wish  me  to  believe  that 
you  are  witty  I  must  really  trouble  you  to 
make  a  joke.  Dr.  Holmes's  own  wit,  for 
example,  is  as  certain  as  the  law  of  grav- 
itation, but  over  all  these  pages  of  his 
hangs  vagueness,  and  we  scan  them  in 
vain  for  reassuring  details. 

'Mild  orthodoxy,  ripened  in  Unitarian 
sunshine,'  does  not  sound  very  appetising, 
though  we  are  assured  by  Dr.  Holmes  that 
it  is  'a  very  agreeable  aspect  of  Chris- 
tianity.' Emerson  himself  does  not  seem 
to  have  found  it  very  lively,  for  in  1832, 
after  three  years'  experience  of  the  min- 
istry of  the  '  Second  Church  '  of  Boston, 
he  retires  from  it,  not  tumultuously  or 
with  any  deep  feeling,  but  with  something 
very  like  a  yawn.  He  concludes  his  fare- 
well sermon  to  his  people  as  follows  :  — 


EMERSON.  243 

'  Having  said  this  I  have  said  all.  I  have 
no  hostility  to  this  institution.  I  am  only 
stating  my  want  of  sympathy  with  it.' 

Dr.  Holmes  makes  short  work  of  Emer- 
son's childhood.  He  was  born  in  Boston 
on  the  2 5th  May,  1803,  and  used  to  sit 
upon  a  wall  and  drive  his  mother's  cow  to 
pasture.  In  fact,  Dr.  Holmes  adds  noth- 
ing to  what  we  already  knew  of  the  quiet 
and  blameless  life  that  came  to  its  ap- 
pointed end  on  the  2/th  April,  1882.  On 
the  completion  of  his  college  education, 
Emerson  became  a  student  of  theology, 
and  after  a  turn  at  teaching,  was  ordained, 
in  March  1829,  minister  of  the  'Second 
Church  '  in  Boston.  In  September  of  the 
same  year  he  married  ;  and  the  death  of 
his  young  wife,  in  February  1832,  perhaps 
quickened  the  doubts  and  disinclinations 
which  severed  his  connection  with  his  '  In- 
stitution' on  the  Qth  September,  1832. 
The  following  year  he  visited  Europe  for 
the  first  time,  and  made  his  celebrated 
call  upon  Carlyle  at  Craigenputtock,  and 
laid  the  keel  of  a  famous  friendship.  In 
the  summer  of  1834  he  settled  at  Concord. 
He  married  again,  visited  England  again, 


244  EMERSON. 

wrote  essays,  delivered  lectures,  made  ora- 
tions, published  poems,  carried  on  a  long 
and  most  remarkable  correspondence  with 
Carlyle,  enjoyed  after  the  most  temperate 
and  serene  of  fashions  many  things  and 
much  happiness.  And  then  he  died. 

'  Can  you  emit  sparks  ? '  said  the  cat  to 
the  ugly  duckling  in  the  fairy  tale,  and 
the  poor  abashed  creature  had  to  admit 
that  it  could  not.  Emerson  could  emit 
sparks  with  the  most  electrical  of  cats. 
He  is  all  sparks  and  shocks.  If  one  were 
required  to  name  the  most  non-sequacious 
author  one  had  ever  read,  I  do  not  see 
how  we  could  help  nominating  Emerson. 
But,  say  some  of  his  warmest  admirers, 
'What  then?'  'It  does  not  matter!'  It 
appears  to  me  to  matter  a  great  deal. 

A  wise  author  never  allows  his  reader's 
mind  to  be  at  large,  but  casts  about  from 
the  very  first  how  to  secure  it  all  for  him- 
self. He  takes  you  (seemingly)  into  his 
confidence,  perhaps  pretends  to  consult  you 
as  to  the  best  route,  but  at  all  events  points 
out  to  you  the  road,  lying  far  ahead,  which 
you  are  to  travel  in  his  company.  How 
carefully  does  a  really  great  writer,  like 


EMERSON.  245 

Dr.  Newman  or  M.  Renan,  explain  to  you 
what  he  is  going  to  do  and  how  he  is  going 
to  do  it !  His  humour,  wit,  and  fancy, 
however  abundant  they  may  be,  spring  up 
like  wayside  flowers,  and  do  but  adorn  and 
render  more  attractive  the  path  along  which 
it  is  his  object  to  conduct  you.  The  read- 
er's mind,  interested  from  the  beginning, 
and  desirous  of  ascertaining  whether  the 
author  keeps  his  word,  and  adheres  to  his 
plan,  feels  the  glow  of  healthy  exercise, 
and  pays  a  real  though  unconscious  atten- 
tion. But  Emerson  makes  no  terms  with 
his  readers  —  he  gives  them  neither  thread 
nor  clue,  and  thus  robs  them  of  one  of  the 
keenest  pleasures  of  reading, — the  being 
beforehand  with  your  author,  and  going 
shares  with  him  in  his  own  thoughts. 

If  it  be  said  that  it  is  manifestly  unfair 
to  compare  a  mystical  writer  like  Emerson 
with  a  polemical  or  historical  one,  I  am  not 
concerned  to  answer  the  objection,  for  let 
the  comparison  be  made  with  whom  you 
will,  the  unparalleled  non-sequaciousness 
of  Emerson  is  as  certain  as  the  Correggi- 
osity  of  Correggio.  You  never  know  what 
he  will  be  at.  His  sentences  fall  over 


246  EMERSON. 

you  in  glittering  cascades,  beautiful  and 
bright,  and  for  the  moment  refreshing,  but 
after  a  very  brief  while  the  mind,  having 
nothing  to  do  on  its  own  account  but  to 
remain  wide  open,  and  see  what  Emerson 
sends  it,  grows  first  restive  and  then  tor- 
pid. Admiration  gives  way  to  astonish- 
ment, astonishment  to  bewilderment,  and 
bewilderment  to  stupefaction. 

*  Napoleon  is  not  a  man,  but  a  system,' 
once  said,  in  her  most  impressive  tones, 
Madame  de  Stael  to  Sir  James  Mackintosh, 
across  a  dinner-table.  '  Magnificent ! '  mur- 
mured Sir  James.  'But  what  does  she 
mean  ? '  whispered  one  of  those  helplessly 
commonplace  creatures  who,  like  the  pres- 
ent writer,  go  about  spoiling  everything. 
'  Mass  !  I  cannot  tell ! '  was  the  frank  ac- 
knowledgment and  apt  Shakspearian  quo- 
tation of  Mackintosh.  Emerson's  meaning, 
owing  to  his  non-sequacious  style,  is  often 
very  difficult  to  apprehend.  Hear  him  for 
a  moment  on  '  Experience  '  :  — 

'  I  gossip  for  my  hour  concerning  the 
eternal  politic.  I  have  seen  many  fair  pic- 
tures, not  in  vain.  A  wonderful  time  I 
have  lived  in.  I  am  not  the  novice  I  was 


EMERSON.  247 

fourteen,  nor  yet  seven  years  ago.  Let 
who  will  ask,  Where  is  the  fruit?  I  find 
a  private  fruit  sufficient.  This  is  a  fruit, 
that  I  should  not  ask  for  a  rash  effect  from 
meditations,  counsels,  and  the  hiving  of 
truths.' 

This  surely  is  an  odd  way  of  hiving 
truths.  It  follows  from  it  that  Emerson 
is  more  striking  than  suggestive.  He 
likes  things  on  a  large  scale  —  he  is  fond 
of  ethnical  remarks  and  typical  persons. 
Notwithstanding  his  habit  of  introducing 
the  names  of  common  things  into  his  dis- 
courses and  poetry  ('  Hay,  corn,  roots, 
hemp,  flax,  apples,  wool,  and  wood,'  is  a 
line  from  one  of  his  poems),  his  familiarity 
therewith  is  evidently  not  great.  '  Take 
care,  papa,'  cried  his  little  son,  seeing  him  at 
work  with  his  spade,  '  you  will  dig  your  leg.' 

His  essay  on  Friendship  will  not  be 
found  satisfactory.  Here  is  a  subject  on 
which  surely  we  are  entitled  to  'body.' 
The  Over  Soul  was  different,  there  it  was 
easy  to  agree  with  Carlyle,  who,  writing  to 
Emerson,  says :  '  Those  voices  of  yours 
which  I  likened  to  unembodied  souls  and 
censure  sometimes  for  having  no  body,  — 


248  EMERSON. 

how  can  they  have  a  body  ?  They  are  light 
rays  darting  upwards  in  the  east ! '  But 
friendship  is  a  word  the  very  sight  of 
which  in  print  makes  the  heart  warm. 
One  remembers  Elia  :  '  Oh  !  it  is  pleasant 
as  it  is  rare  to  find  the  same  arm  linked  in 
yours  at  forty  which  at  thirteen  helped  it 
to  turn  over  the  Cicero  De  Amicitid,  or 
some  other  tale  of  antique  friendship  which 
the  young  heart  even  then  was  burning  to 
anticipate.'  With  this  in  your  ear  it  is 
rather  chilling  to  read,  '  I  do,  then,  with 
my  friends  as  I  do  with  my  books.  I 
would  have  them  where  I  can  find  them, 
but  I  seldom  use  them.  We  must  have 
society  on  our  own  terms,  and  admit  or 
exclude  it  on  the  slightest  cause.  I  can- 
not afford  to  speak  much  with  my  friend.' 
These  are  not  genial  terms. 

For  authors  and  books  his  affection,  real 
as  it  was,  was  singularly  impersonal.  In 
his  treatment  of  literary  subjects,  we  miss 
the  purely  human  touch,  the  grip  of  affec- 
tion, the  accent  of  scorn,  that  so  pleasantly 
characterise  the  writings  of  Mr.  Lowell. 
Emerson,  it  is  to  be  feared,  regarded  a 
company  of  books  but  as  a  congeries  of 


EMERSON.  249 

ideas.  For  one  idea  he  is  indebted  to 
Plato,  for  another  to  Dr.  Channing.  Sartor 
Resartus,  so  Emerson  writes,  is  a  noble 
philosophical  poem,  but  'have  you  read 
Sampson  Read's  Growth  of  the  Mind?' 
We  read  somewhere  of  '  Pindar,  Raphael, 
Angelo,  Dryden,  and  De  Stael.'  Emer- 
son's notions  of  literary  perspective  are 
certainly  'very  early.'  Dr.  Holmes  him- 
self is  every  bit  as  bad.  In  this  very  book 
of  his,  speaking  about  the  dangerous  lib- 
erty some  poets  —  Emerson  amongst  the 
number — take  of  crowding  a  redundant 
syllable  into  a  line,  he  reminds  us  'that 
Shakspeare  and  Milton  knew  how  to  use 
it  effectively  ;  Shelley  employed  it  freely ; 
Bryant  indulged  in  it ;  Willis  was  fond  of 
it.'  One  has  heard  of  the  Republic  of  Let- 
ters, but  this  surely  does  not  mean  that 
one  author  is  as  good  as  another.  'Willis 
was  fond  of  it.'  I  daresay  he  was,  but  we 
are  not  fond  of  Willis,  and  cannot  help 
regarding  the  citation  of  his  poetical  ex- 
ample as  an  outrage. 

None  the  less,  if  we  will  have  but  a  little 
patience,  and  bid  our  occasional  wonder- 
ment be  still,  and  read  Emerson  at  the 


25O  EMERSON. 

right  times  and  in  small  quantities,  we 
shall  not  remain  strangers  to  his  charm. 
He  bathes  the  universe  in  his  thoughts. 
Nothing  less  than  the  Whole  ever  con- 
tented Emerson.  His  was  no  parochial 
spirit.  He  cries  out  — 

'  From  air  and  ocean  bring  me  foods, 
From  all  zones  and  altitudes.' 

How  beautiful,  too,  are  some  of  his  sen- 
tences. Here  is  a  bit  from  his  essay  on 
Shakspeare  in  Representative  Men :  — 

'  It  is  the  essence  of  poetry  to  spring 
like  the  rainbow  daughter  of  Wonder  from 
the  invisible,  to  abolish  the  past,  and  refuse 
all  history.  Malone,  Warburton,  Dyce,  and 
Collier  have  wasted  their  life.  The  famed 
theatres  have  vainly  assisted.  Betterton, 
Garrick,  Kemble,  Kean,  and  Macready 
dedicate  their  lives  to  his  genius  —  him 
they  crown,  elucidate,  obey,  and  express,  — 
the  genius  knows  them  not.  The  recita- 
tion begins,  one  golden  word  leaps  out 
immortal  from  all  this  painful  pedantry, 
and  sweetly  torments  us  with  invitations 
to  his  own  inaccessible  homes.' 

The  words  we  have  ventured  to  italicise 
seem  to  us  to  be  of  surpassing  beauty,  and 


EMERSON.  251 

to  express  what  many  a  play-goer  of  late 
years  must  often  have  dimly  felt. 

Patience  should  indeed  be  the  motto  for 
any  Emerson  reader  who  is  not  by  nature 
'author's  kin.'  For  example,  in  the  essay 
on  Character,  after  reading,  '  Everything 
in  nature  is  bipolar,  or  has  a  positive  and 
negative  pole.  There  is  a  male  and  a  fe- 
male, a  spirit  and  a  fact,  a  north  and  a 
south.  Spirit  is  the  positive,  the  event  is 
the  negative  ;  will  is  the  north,  action  the 
south  pole.  Character  may  be  ranked  as 
having  its  natural  place  in  the  north/  — 
how  easy  to  lay  the  book  down  and  read 
no  more  that  day  ;  but  a  moment's  -patience 
is  amply  rewarded,  for  but  sixteen  lines 
farther  on  we  may  read  as  follows  :  '  We 
boast  our  emancipation  from  many  super- 
stitions, but  if  we  have  broken  any  idols  it 
is  through  a  transfer  of  the  idolatry.  What 
have  I  gained  that  I  no  longer  immolate  a 
bull  to  Jove  or  to  Neptune,  or  a  mouse  to 
Hecate  ;  that  I  do  not  tremble  before  the 
Eumenides  or  the  Catholic  Purgatory,  or 
the  Calvinistic  Judgment  Day,  —  if  I  quake 
at  opinion,  the  public  opinion  as  we  call  it, 
or  the  threat  of  assault  or  contumely,  or 


2$  2  EMERSON. 

bad  neighbours,  or  poverty,  or  mutilation, 
or  at  the  rumour  of  revolution  or  of  won- 
der !  If  I  quake,  what  matters  it  what  I 
quake  at  ?  '  Well  and  truly  did  Carlyle 
write  to  Emerson,  '  You  are  a  new  era,  my 
man,  in  your  huge  country.' 

Emerson's  poetry  has  at  least  one  of  the 
qualities  of  true  poetry  —  it  always  pleases 
and  occasionally  delights.  Great  poetry  it 
may  not  be,  but  it  has  the  happy  knack  of 
slipping  in  between  our  fancies,  and  of 
clinging  like  ivy  to  the  masonry  of  the 
thought-structure  beneath  which  each  one 
of  us  has  his  dwelling.  I  must  be  allowed 
room  for  two  quotations,  one  from  the 
stanzas  called  Give  all  to  Love,  the  other 
from  Wood  Notes. 

'  Cling  with  life  to  the  maid ; 
But  when  the  surprise, 
First  shadow  of  surmise, 
Flits  across  her  bosom  young 
Of  a  joy  apart  from  thee, 
Free  be  she,  fancy-free, 
Nor  thou  detain  her  vesture's  hem, 
Nor  the  palest  rose  she  flung 
From  her  summer's  diadem. 
Though  thou  loved  her  as  thyself, 
As  a  self  of  purer  clay, 
Tho*  her  parting  dims  the  day, 


EMERSON.  253 

Stealing  grace  from  all  alive  ; 

Heartily  know 

When  half-gods  go, 
The  gods  arrive.' 

The   lines   from    Wood  Notes  run  as  fol- 
lows :  — 

'  Come  learn  with  me  the  fatal  song 
Which  knits  the  world  in  music  strong, 
Whereto  every  bosom  dances, 
Kindled  with  courageous  fancies  ; 
Come  lift  thine  eyes  to  lofty  rhymes 
Of  things  with  things,  of  times  with  times, 
Primal  chimes  of  sun  and  shade, 
Of  sound  and  echo,  man  and  maid  ; 
The  land  reflected  in  the  flood  ; 
Body  with  shadow  still  pursued. 
For  nature  beats  in  perfect  tune 
And  rounds  with  rhyme  her  every  rune  ; 
Whether  she  work  in  land  or  sea 
Or  hide  underground  her  alchemy, 
Thou  canst  not  wave  thy  staff  in  air, 
Or  dip  thy  paddle  in  the  lake, 
But  it  carves  the  bow  of  beauty  there, 
And  the  ripples  in  rhymes  the  oar  forsake. 
Not  unrelated,  unaffied, 
But  to  each  thought  and  thing  allied, 
Is  perfect  nature's  every  part, 
Rooted  in  the  mighty  heart.' 

What  place  Emerson  is  to  occupy  in 
American  literature  is  for  America  to  de- 
termine. Some  authoritative  remarks  on 
this  subject  are  to  be  found  in  Mr.  Low- 


254  EMERSON. 

ell's  essay  on  '  Thoreau,'  in  My  Study 
Windows ;  but  here  at  home,  where  we 
are  sorely  pressed  for  room,  it  is  certain  he 
must  be  content  with  a  smalj  allotment, 
where,  however,  he  may  for  ever  sit  be- 
neath his  own  vine  and  fig-tree,  none  dar- 
ing to  make  him  afraid.  Emerson  will 
always  be  the  favourite  author  of  some- 
body ;  and  to  be  always  read  by  somebody 
is  better  than  to  be  read  first  by  everybody 
and  then  by  nobody.  Indeed,  it  is  hard  to 
fancy  a  pleasanter  destiny  than  to  join  the 
company  of  lesser  authors.  All  their  read- 
ers are  sworn  friends.  They  are  spared 
the  harsh  discords  of  ill-judged  praise  and 
feigned  rapture.  Once  or  twice  in  a  cen- 
tury some  enthusiastic  and  expansive  ad- 
mirer insists  upon  dragging  them  from 
thetr  shy  retreats,  and  trumpeting  their 
fame  in  the  market-place,  asserting,  possi- 
bly with  loud  asseverations  (after  the  fash- 
ion of  Mr.  Swinburne),  that  they  are  pre- 
cisely as  much  above  Otway  and  Collins 
an'd  George  Eliot  as  they  are  below  Shaks- 
peare  and  Hugo  and  Emily  Bronte.  The 
great  world  looks  on  good-humouredly  for 
a  moment  or  two,  and  then  proceeds  as 


EMERSON.  255 

before,  and  the  disconcerted  author  is  left 
free  to  scuttle  back  to  his  corner,  where  he 
is  all  the  happier,  sharing  the  raptures  of 
the  lonely  student,  for  his  brief  experience 
of  publicity. 

Let  us  bid  farewell  to  Emerson,  who  has 
bidden  farewell  to  the  world,  in  the  words 
of  his  own  Good-bye. 

1  Good-bye  to  flattery's  fawning  face, 
To  grandeur  with  his  wise  grimace, 
To  upstart  wealth's  averted  eye, 
To  supple  office  low  and  high, 
To  crowded  halls,  to  court  and  street, 
To  frozen  hearts  and  hasting  feet, 
To  those  who  go  and  those  who  come,  — 
Good-bye,  proud  world,  I  'm  going  home, 
I  am  going  to  my  own  hearth-stone 
Bosomed  in  yon  green  hills,  alone, 
A  secret  nook  in  a  pleasant  land, 
Whose  groves  the  frolic  fairies  planned ; 
Where  arches  green  the  livelong  day 
Echo  the  blackbird's  roundelay, 
And  vulgar  feet  have  never  trod, 
A  spot  that  is  sacred  to  thought  and  God.' 


THE   OFFICE   OF  LITERATURE. 

DR.  JOHN  BROWN'S  pleasant  story  has 
become  well  known,  of  the  countryman 
who,  being  asked  to  account  for  the  grav- 
ity of  his  dog,  replied,  '  Oh,  sir !  life  is  full 
of  sairiousness  to  him  — he  can  just  never 
get  eneugh  o'  fechtinY  Something  of  the 
spirit  of  this  saddened  dog  seems  lately  to 
have  entered  into  the  very  people  who 
ought  to  be  freest  from  it  —  our  men  of 
letters.  They  are  all  very  serious  and  very 
quarrelsome.  To  some  of  them  it  is  dan- 
gerous even  to  allude.  Many  are  wedded 
to  a  theory  or  period,  and  are  the  most 
uxorious  of  husbands  —  ever  ready  to  re- 
sent an  affront  to  their  lady.  This  devo- 
tion makes  them  very  grave,  and  possibly 
very  happy  after  a  pedantic  fashion.  One 
remembers  what  Hazlitt,  who  was  neither 
happy  nor  pedantic,  has  said  about  pedan- 
try:- 


THE   OFFICE  OF  LITERATURE. 

'  The  power  of  attaching  an  interest  to 
the  most  trifling  or  painful  pursuits  is  one 
of  the  greatest  happinesses  of  our  nature. 
The  common  soldier  mounts  the  breach 
with  joy,  the  miser  deliberately  starves 
himself  to  death,  the  mathematician  sets 
about  extracting  the  cube-root  with  a  feel- 
ing of  enthusiasm,  and  the  lawyer  sheds 
tears  of  delight  over  Coke  upon  Lyttleton. 
He  who  is  not  in  some  measure  a  pedant, 
though  he  may  be  a  wise  cannot  be  a  very 
happy  man.' 

Possibly  not ;  but  then  we  are  surely 
not  content  that  our  authors  should  be 
pedants  in  order  that  they  may  be  happy 
and  devoted.  As  one  of  the  great  class 
for  whose  sole  use  and  behalf  literature  ex- 
ists —  the  class  of  readers  —  I  protest  that 
it  is  to  me  a  matter  of  indifference  whether 
an  author  is  happy  or  not.  I  want  him  to 
make  me  happy.  That  is  his  office.  Let 
him  discharge  it. 

I  recognise  in  this  connection  the  corre- 
sponding truth  of  what  Sydney  Smith 
makes  his  Peter  Plymley  say  about  the  pri- 
vate virtues  of  Mr.  Perceval,  the  Prime 
Minister:  — 


258       THE   OFFICE   OF  LITERATURE. 

'You  spend  a  great  deal  of  ink  about 
the  character  of  the  present  Prime  Minis- 
ter. Grant  all  that  you  write  —  I  say,  I 
fear  that  he  will  ruin  Ireland,  and  pursue 
a  line  of  policy  destructive  to  the  true  in- 
terests of  his  country  ;  and  then  you  tell 
me  that  he  is  faithful  to  Mrs.  Perceval,  and 
kind  to  the  Master  Percevals.  I  should 
prefer  that  he  whipped  his  boys  and  saved 
his  country.' 

We  should  never  confuse  functions  or 
apply  wrong  tests.  What  can  books  do 
for  us  ?  Dr.  Johnson,  the  least  pedantic 
of  men,  put  the  whole  matter  into  a  nut- 
shell (a  cocoa  -  nut  shell,  if  you  will  — 
Heaven  forbid  that  I  should  seek  to  com- 
press the  great  Doctor  within  any  nar- 
rower limits  than  my  metaphor  requires  !), 
when  he  wrote  that  a  book  should  teach 
us  either  to  enjoy  life  or 'endure  it.  '  Give 
us  enjoyment!'  'Teach  us  endurance!' 
Hearken  to  the  ceaseless  demand  and  the 
perpetual  prayer  of  an  ever  unsatisfied  and 
always  suffering  humanity  ! 

How  is  a  book  to  answer  the  ceaseless 
demand  ? 

Self-forgetfulness  is  of   the  essence  of 


THE   OFFICE   OF  LITERATURE.       259 

enjoyment,  and  the  author  who  would  con- 
fer pleasure  must  possess  the  art,  or  know 
the  trick,  of  destroying  for  the  time  the 
reader's  own  personality.  Undoubtedly 
the  easiest  way  of  doing  this  is  by  the  cre- 
ation of  a  host  of  rival  personalities  — 
hence  the  number  and  the  popularity  of 
novels.  Whenever  a  novelist  fails  his 
book  is  said  to  flag  ;  that  is,  the  reader  sud- 
denly (as  in  skating)  comes  bump  down 
upon  his  own  personality,  and  curses  the 
unskilful  author.  No  lack  of  characters 
and  continual  motion  is  the  easiest  recipe 
for  a  novel,  which,  like  a  beggar,  should 
always  be  kept  '  moving  on.'  Nobody 
knew  this  better  than  Fielding,  whose  nov- 
els, like  most  good  ones,  are  full  of  inns. 

When  those  who  are  addicted  to  what  is 
called  'improving  reading'  inquire  of  you 
petulantly  why  you  cannot  find  change  of 
company  and  scene  in  books  of  travel,  you 
should  answer  cautiously  that  when  books 
of  travel  are  full  of  inns,  atmosphere,  and 
motion,  they  are  as  good  as  any  novel ;  nor 
is  there  any  reason  in  the  nature  of  things 
why  they  should  not  always  be  so,  though 
experience  proves  the  contrary. 


260       THE   OFFICE   OF  LITERATURE. 

The  truth  or  falsehood  of  a  book  is  im- 
material. George  Borrow's  Bible  in  Spain 
is,  I  suppose,  true ;  though  now  that  I  come 
to  think  of  it,  in  what  is  to  me  a  new  light, 
one  remembers  that  it  contains  some  odd 
things.  But  was  not  Borrow  the  accred- 
ited agent  of  the  British  and  Foreign 
Bible  Society  ?  Did  he  not  travel  (and  he 
had  a  free  hand)  at  their  charges  ?  Was 
he  not  befriended  by  our  minister  at  Ma- 
drid, Mr.  Villiers,  subsequently  Earl  of 
Clarendon  in  the  peerage  of  England?  It 
must  be  true ;  and  yet  at  this  moment  I 
would  as  lief  read  a  chapter  of  the  Bible  in 
Spain  as  I  would  Gil  Bias ;  nay,  I  posi- 
tively would  give  the  preference  to  Senor 
Giorgio. 

Nobody  can  sit  down  to  read  Borrow's 
books  without  as  completely  forgetting 
himself  as  if  he  were  a  boy  in  the  forest 
with  Gurth  and  Wamba. 

Borrow  is  provoking  and  has  his  full 
share  of  faults,  and,  though  the  owner  of  a 
style,  is  capable  of  excruciating  offences. 
His  habitual  use  of  the  odious  word  'indi- 
vidual' as  a  noun-substantive  (seven  times 
in  three  pages  of  The  Romany  Rye)  elicits 


THE   OFFICE  OF  LITERATURE.      26 1 

the  frequent  groan,  and  he  is  certainly  once 
guilty  of  calling  fish  the  'finny  tribe.'  He 
believed  himself  to  be  animated  by  an  in- 
tense hatred  of  the  Church  of  Rome,  and 
disfigures  many  of  his  pages  by  Lawrence- 
Boythorn-like  tirades  against  that  institu- 
tion ;  but  no  Catholic  of  sense  need  on  this 
account  deny  himself  the  pleasure  of  read- 
ing Borrow,  whose  one  dominating  passion 
was  camaraderie,  and  who  hob-a-nobbed  in 
the  friendliest  spirit  with  priest  and  gipsy 
in  a  fashion  as  far  beyond  praise  as  it  is 
beyond  description  by  any  pen  other  than 
his  own.  Hail  to  thee,  George  Borrow ! 
Cervantes  himself,  Gil  Bias,  do  not  more 
effectually  carry  their  readers  into  the  land 
of  the  Cid  than  does  this  miraculous  agent 
of  the  Bible  Society,  by  favour  of  whose 
pleasantness  we  can,  any  hour  of  the  week, 
enter  Villafranca  by  night,  or  ride  into 
Galicia  on  an  Andalusian  stallion  (which 
proved  to  be  a  foolish  thing  to  do),  without 
costing  anybody  a  peseta,  and  at  no  risk 
whatever  to  our  necks  —  be  they  long  or 
short. 

Cooks,    warriors,    and  authors  must  be 
judged  by  the  effects  they  produce  :  tooth- 


262       THE  OFFICE   OF  LITERATURE. 

some  dishes,  glorious  victories,  pleasant 
books —  these  are  our  demands.  We  have 
nothing  to  do  with  ingredients,  tactics,  or 
methods.  We  have  no  desire  to  be  ad- 
mitted into  the  kitchen,  the  council,  or  the 
study.  The  cook  may  clean  her  saucepans 
how  she  pleases  —  the  warrior  place  his 
men  as  he  likes — the  author  handle  his 
material  or  weave  his  plot  as  best  he  can  — 
when  the  dish  is  served  we  only  ask,  Is  it 
good?  when  the  battle  has  been  fought, 
Who  won  ?  when  the  book  comes  out, 
Does  it  read  ? 

Authors  ought  not  to  be  above  being  re- 
minded that  it  is  their  first  duty  to  write 
agreeably  —  some  very  disagreeable  men 
have  succeeded  in  doing  so,  and  there  is 
therefore  no  need  for  anyone  to  despair. 
Every  author,  be  he  grave  or  gay,  should 
try  to  make  his  book  as  ingratiating  as 
possible.  Reading  is  not  a  duty,  and  has 
consequently  no  business  to  be  made  dis- 
agreeable. Nobody  is  under  any  obligation 
to  read  any  other  man's  book. 

Literature  exists  to  please,  —  to  lighten 
the  burden  of  men's  lives;  to  make  them 
for  a  short  while  forget  their  sorrows  and 


THE   OFFICE  OF  LITERATURE.      263 

their  sins,  their  silenced  hearths,  their  dis- 
appointed hopes,  their  grim  futures — and 
those  men  of  letters  are  the  best  loved  who 
have  best  performed  literature's  truest  of- 
fice. Their  name  is  happily  legion,  and  I 
will  conclude  these  disjointed  remarks  by 
quoting  from  one  of  them,  as  honest  a  par- 
son as  ever  took  tithe  or  voted  for  the  Tory 
candidate,  the  Rev.  George  Crabbe.  Hear 
him  in  The  Frank  Courtship:  — 

' "  I  must  be  loved ; "  said  Sybil ;  "  I  must  see 

The  man  in  terrors,  who  aspires  to  me  : 

At  my  forbidding  frown  his  heart  must  ache, 

His  tongue  must  falter,  and  his  frame  must  shake  ; 

And  if  I  grant  him  at  my  feet  to  kneel, 

What  trembling  fearful  pleasure  must  he  feel : 

Nay,  such  the  rapture  that  my  smiles  inspire 

That  reason's  self  must  for  a  time  retire." 

"  Alas  !  for  good  Josiah,"  said  the  dame, 

"  These  wicked  thoughts  would  fill  his  soul  with  shame  ; 

He  kneel  and  tremble  at  a  thing  of  dust ! 

He  cannot,  child :  "  —  the  child  replied,  "  He  must."  ' 

Were  an  office  to  be  opened  for  the  in- 
surance of  literary  reputations,  no  critic  at 
all  Hkely  to  be  in  the  society's  service  would 
refuse  the  life  of  a  poet  who  could  write 
like  Crabbe.  Cardinal  Newman,  Mr.  Les- 
lie Stephen,  Mr.  Swinburne,  are  not  always 
of  the  same  way  of  thinking,  but  all  three 
hold  the  one  true  faith  about  Crabbe. 


264       THE   OFFICE   OF  LITERATURE. 

But  even  were  Crabbe  now  left  unread, 
which  is  very  far  from  being  the  case,  his 
would  be  an  enviable  fame  —  for  was  he 
not  one  of  the  favourite  poets  of  Walter 
Scott,  and  whenever  the  closing  scene  of 
the  great  magician's  life  is  read  in  the 
pages  of  Lockhart,  must  not  Crabbe's  name 
be  brought  upon  the  reader's  quivering 
lip? 

To  soothe  the  sorrow  of  the  soothers  of 
sorrow,  to  bring  tears  to  the  eyes  and 
smiles  to  the  cheeks  of  the  lords  of  human 
smiles  and  tears,  is  no  mean  ministry,  and 
it  is  Crabbe's. 


WORN-OUT  TYPES. 

IT  is  now  a  complaint  of  quite  respect- 
able antiquity  that  the  types  in  which  hu- 
manity was  originally  set  up  by  a  humour- 
loving  Providence  are  worn  out  and  require 
recasting.  The  surface  of  society  has  be- 
come smooth.  It  ought  to  be  a  bas-relief 
—  it  is  a  plane.  Even  a  Chaucer  (so  it  is 
said)  could  make  nothing  of  us  as  we  wend 
our  way  to  Brighton.  We  have  tempers, 
it  is  true  —  bad  ones  for  the  most  part ; 
but  no  humours  to  be  in  or  out  of.  We 
are  all  far  too  much  alike ;  we  do  not 
group  well ;  we  only  mix.  All  this,  and 
more,  is  alleged  against  us.  A  cheerfully 
disposed  person  might  perhaps  think  that, 
assuming  the  prevailing  type  to  be  a  good, 
plain,  readable  one,  this  uniformity  need 
not  necessarily  be  a  bad  thing ;  but  had  he 
the  courage  to  give  expression  to  this  opin- 
ion he  would  most  certainly  be  at  once  told, 


266  WORN-OUT  TYPES. 

with  that  mixture  of  asperity  and  contempt 
so  properly  reserved  for  those  who  take 
cheerful  views"  of  anything,  that  without 
well-defined  types  of  character  there  can 
be  neither  national  comedy  nor  whimsical 
novel ;  and  as  it  is  impossible  to  imagine 
any  person  sufficiently  cheerful  to  carry 
the  argument  further  by  inquiring  ingen- 
uously, '  And  how  would  that  matter  ? '  the 
position  of  things  becomes  serious,  and  de- 
mands a  few  minutes'  investigation. 

As  we  said  at  the  beginning,  the  com- 
plaint is  an  old  one  —  most  complaints 
are.  When  Montaigne  was  in  Rome  in 
1580  he  complained  bitterly  that  he  was 
always  knocking  up  against  his  own  coun- 
trymen, and  might  as  well  have  been  in 
Paris.  And  yet  some  people  would  have 
you  believe  that  this  curse  of  the  Conti- 
nent is  quite  new.  More  than  seventy 
years  ago  that  most  quotable  of  English 
authors,  Hazlitt,  wrote  as  follows  :  — 

'  It  is,  indeed,  the  evident  tendency  of 
all  literature  to  generalise  and  dissipate 
character  by  giving  men  the  same  artificial 
education  and  the  same  common  stock  of 
ideas  ;  so  that  we  see  all  objects  from  the 


WORN-OUT  TYPES.  267 

same  point  of  view,  and  through  the  same 
reflected  medium  ;  we  learn  to  exist  not  in 
ourselves,  but  in  books ;  all  men  become 
alike,  mere  readers  —  spectators,  not  actors, 
in  the  scene,  and  lose  all  proper  personal 
identity.  The  templar,  —  the  wit,  —  the 
man  of  pleasure  and  the  man  of  fashion, 
the  courtier  and  the  citizen,  the  knight  and 
the  squire,  the  lover  and  the  miser —  Love- 
lace, Lothario,  Will  Honeycomb  and  Sir 
Roger  de  Coverley,  Sparkish  and  Lord 
Foppington,  Western  and  Tom  Jones,  my 
Father  and  my  Uncle  Toby,  Millamant 
and  Sir  Sampson  Legend,  Don  Quixote 
and  Sancho,  Gil  Bias  and  Guzman  d'Alfa- 
rache,  Count  Fathom  and  Joseph  Surface, 
—  have  all  met  and  exchanged  common- 
places on  the  barren  plains  of  the  haute  lit- 
ttrature>  — toil  slowly  on  to  the  Temple  of 
Science,  seen  a  long  way  off  upon  a  level, 
and  end  in  one  dull  compound  of  politics, 
criticism,  chemistry,  and  metaphysics.' 
Very  pretty  writing,  certainly  ;  *  nor  can 

*  Yet  in  his  essay  On  Londoners  and  Country  People 
we  find  Hazlitt  writing,  '  London  is  the  only  place  in 
which  the  child  grows  completely  up  into  the  man.  I 
have  known  characters  of  this  kind,  which,  in  the  way  of 


268  WORN-OUT  TYPES. 

it  be  disputed  that  uniformity  of  surround- 
ings puts  a  tax  upon  originality.  To  make 
bricks  and  find  your  own  straw  are  terms 
of  bondage.  Modern  characters,  like  mod- 
ern houses,  are  possibly  built  too  much  on 
the  same  lines.  Dickens's  description  of 
Coketown  is  not  easily  forgotten  :  — 

'All  the  public  inscriptions'  in  the  town 
were  painted  alike,  in  severe  characters  of 
black  and  white.  The  jail  might  have  been 
the  infirmary,  the  infirmary  might  have 
been  the  jail,  the  town  hall  might  have 
been  either,  or  both,  or  anything  else,  for 
anything  that  appeared  to  the  contrary  in 
the  graces  of  their  construction.' 

And  the  inhabitants  of  Coketown  are 
exposed  to  the  same  objection  as  their 
buildings.  Every  one  sinks  all  traces  of 
what  he  vulgarly  calls  '  the  shop '  (that  is, 
his  lawful  calling),  and  busily  pretends  to 
be  nothing.  Distinctions  of  dress  are  found 
irksome.  A  barrister  of  feeling  hates  to 
be  seen  in  his  robes  save  when  actually 
engaged  in  a  case.  An  officer  wears  his 

childish  ignorance  and  self-pleasing  delusion,  exceeded 
anything  to  be  met  with  in  Shakspeare  or  Ben  Jonson, 
or  the  Old  Comedy.' 


WORN-OUT  TYPES.  269 

uniform  only  when  obliged.  Doctors  have 
long  since  shed  all  outward  signs  of  their 
healing  art.  Court  dress  excites  a  smile.  A 
countess  in  her  jewels  is  reckoned  indecent 
by  the  British  workman,  who,  all  unem- 
ployed, puffs  his  tobacco  smoke  against 
the  window-pane  of  the  carriage  that  is 
conveying  her  ladyship  to  a  drawing-room  ; 
and  a  West-end  clergyman  is  with  difficulty 
restrained  from  telling  his  congregation 
what  he  had  been  told  the  British  workman 
said  on  that  occasion.  Had  he  but  had 
the  courage  to  repeat  those  stirring  words, 
his  hearers  (so  he  said)  could  hardly  have 
failed  to  have  felt  their  force  —  so  unusual 
in  such  a  place  ;  but  he  had  not  the  cour- 
age, and  that  sermon  of  the  pavement  re- 
mains unpreached.  The  toe  of  the  peasant 
is  indeed  kibing  the  heel  of  the  courtier. 
The  passion  for  equality  in  externals  can- 
not be  denied.  We  are  all  woven  strangely 
in  the  same  piece,  and  so  it  comes  about 
that,  though  our  modern  society  has  in- 
vented new  callings,  those  callings  have 
not  created  new  types.  Stockbrokers,  di- 
rectors, official  liquidators,  philanthropists, 
secretaries, —not  of  State,  but  of  compa- 


2/O  WORN-OUT  TYPES. 

nies,  —  speculative  builders,  are  a  new  kind 
of  people  known  to  many,  indeed  playing 
a  great  part  among  us,  but  who,  for  all 
that,  have  not  enriched  the  stage  with  a 
single  character.  Were  they  to  disappear 
to-morrow,  to  be  blown  dancing  away  like 
the  leaves  before  Shelley's  west  wind, 
where  in  reading  or  play-going  would  pos- 
terity encounter  them  ?  Alone  amongst  the 
children  of  men,  the  pale  student  of  the 
law,  burning  the  midnight  oil  in  some  one 
of  the  '  high  lonely  towers '  recently  built 
by  the  Benchers  of  the  Middle  Temple  (in 
the  Italian  taste),  would,  whilst  losing  his 
youth  over  that  interminable  series,  The 
Law  Reports,  every  now  and  again  strike 
across  the  old  track,  once  so  noisy  with 
the  bayings  of  the  well-paid  hounds  of  jus- 
tice, and,  pushing  his  way  along  it,  trace 
the  history  of  the  bogus  company,  from 
the  acclamations  attendant  upon  its  illegit- 
imate birth  to  the  hour  of  disgrace  when 
it  dies  by  strangulation  at  the  hands  of  the 
professional  wrecker.  The  pale  student 
will  not  be  a  wholly  unsympathetic  reader. 
Great  swindles  have  ere  now  made  great 
reputations,  and  lawyers  may  surely  be 


WORN-OUT  TYPES.  2?  I 

permitted  to  take  a  pensive  interest  in 
such  matters. 

'  Not  one  except  the  Attorney  was  amused  — 
He,  like  Achilles,  faithful  to  the  tomb, 
So  there  were  quarrels,  cared  not  for  the  cause, 
Knowing  they  must  be  settled  by  the  laws.' 

But  our  elder  dramatists  would  not  have 
let  any  of  these  characters  swim  out  of 
their  ken.  A  glance  over  Ben  Jonson, 
Massinger,  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  is 
enough  to  reveal  their  frank  and  easy 
method.  Their  characters,  like  an  apothe- 
cary's drugs,  wear  labels  round  their  necks. 
Mr.  Justice  Clement  and  Mr.  Justice 
Greedy  ;  Master  Matthew,  the  town  gull  ; 
Sir  Giles  Overreach,  Sir  Epicure  Mammon, 
Mr.  Plenty,  Sir  John  Frugal,  need  no  ex- 
planatory context.  Are  our  dramatists  to 
blame  for  withholding  from  us  the  heroes 
of  our  modern  society  ?  Ought  we  to 
have  — 

'  Sir  Moses,  Sir  Aaron,  Sir  Jamramagee, 
Two  stock-jobbing  Jews,  and  a  shuffling  Parsee  '  ? 

Baron  Contango,  the  Hon.  Mr.  Guinea-Pig, 
poor  Miss  Impulsia  Allottee,  Mr.  Jeremiah 
Builder  —  Rare  Old  Ben,  who  was  fond  of 
the  city,  would  have  given  us  them  all  and 


2/2  WORN-OUT  TYPES. 

many  more ;  but  though  we  may  well  wish 
he  were  here  to  do  it,  we  ought,  I  think, 
to  confess,  that  the  humour  of  these  typical 
persons  who  so  swell  the  dramatis  persona 
of  an  Elizabethan  is,  to  say  the  least  of  it, 
far  to  seek.  There  is  a  certain  warm- 
hearted tradition  about  their  very  names 
which  makes  disrespect  painful.  It  seems 
a  churl's  part  not  to  laugh,  as  did  our 
fathers  before  us,  at  the  humours  of  the 
conventional  parasite  or  impossible  ser- 
ving-man ;  but  we  laugh  because  we  will, 
and  not  because  we  must. 

Genuine  comedy  —  the  true  tickling 
scene,  exquisite  absurdity,  soul-rejoicing 
incongruity  —  has  really  nothing  to  do 
with  types,  prevailing  fashions,  and  such 
like  vulgarities.  Sir  Andrew  Aguecheek 
is  not  a  typical  fool ;  he  is  a  fool,  seised  in 
fee  simple  of  his  folly. 

Humour  lies  not  in  generalisations,  but 
in  the  individual ;  not  in  his  hat  nor  in  his 
hose,  even  though  the  latter  be  '  cross- 
gartered  '  ;  but  in  the  deep  heart  of  him, 
in  his  high-flying  vanities,  his  low-lying 
oddities  —  what  we  call  his  '  ways '  —  nay, 
in  the  very  motions  of  his  back  as  he 


WORN-OUT  TYPES.  273 

crosses  the  road.  These  stir  our  laughter 
whilst  he  lives  and  our  tears  when  he  dies, 
for  in  mourning  over  him  we  know  full 
well  we  are  taking  part  in  our  own  obse- 
quies. '  But  indeed,'  wrote  Charles  Lamb, 
'  we  die  many  deaths  before  we  die,  and  I 
am  almost  sick  when  I  think  that  such  a 
hold  as  I  had  of  you  is  gone.' 

Literature  is  but  the  reflex  of  life,  and 
the  humour  of  it  lies  in  the  portrayal  of  the 
individual  not  the  type;  and  though  the 
young  man  in  Locksley  Hall  no  doubt  ob- 
serves that  the  'individual  withers,'  we 
have  but  to  take  down  George  Meredith's 
novels  to  find  the  fact  is  otherwise,  and 
that  we  have  still  one  amongst  us  who 
takes  notes,  and  against  the  battery  of 
whose  quick  wits  even  the  costly  raiment 
of  Poole  is  no  protection.  We  are  forced 
as  we  read  to  exclaim  with  Petruchio, 
'  Thou  hast  hit  it ;  come  sit  on  me.'  No 
doubt  the  task  of  the  modern  humorist  is 
not  so  easy  as  it  was.  The  surface  ore 
has  been  mostly  picked  up.  In  order  to 
win  the  precious  metal  you  must  now  work 
with  in-stroke  and  out-stroke  after  the  most 
approved  methods.  Sometimes  one  would 


274  WORN-OUT  TYPES. 

enjoy  it  a  little  more  if  we  did  not  hear 
quite  so  distinctly  the  snorting  of  the  en- 
gine, and  the  groaning  and  the  creaking" of 
the  gear  as  it  painfully  winds  up  its  prize  : 
but  what  would  you  ?  Methods,  no  less 
than  men,  must  have  the  defects  of  their 
qualities. 

If,  therefore,  it  be  the  fact  that  our 
national  comedy  is  in  a  decline,  we  must 
look  for  some  other  reasons  for  it  than 
those  suggested  by  Hazlitt  in  1817.  When 
Mr.  Chadband  inquired,  '  Why  can  we  not 
fly,  my  friends  ? '  Mr.  Snagsby  ventured 
to  observe,  '  in  a  cheerful  and  rather  know- 
ing tone,  "  No  wings  !  "  '  but  he  was  imme- 
diately frowned  down  by  Mrs.  Snagsby. 
We  lack  courage  to  suggest  that  the  some- 
what heavy-footed  movements  of  our  recent 
dramatists  are  in  any  way  due  to  their  not 
being  provided  with  those  twin  adjuncts 
indispensable  for  the  genius  who  would 
soar. 


CAMBRIDGE  AND  THE  POETS. 

WHY  all  the  English  poets,  with  a  barely 
decent  number  of  exceptions,  have  been 
Cambridge  men,  has  always  struck  me,  as 
did  the  abstinence  of  the  Greeks  from  malt 
Mr.  Calverley,  'as  extremely  curious.'  But 
in  this  age  of  detail,  one  must,  however 
reluctantly,  submit  to  prove  one's  facts, 
and  I,  therefore,  propose  to  institute  a 
'Modest  Inquiry'  into  this  subject.  Im- 
aginatively, I  shall  don  proctorial  robes, 
and,  armed  with  a  duster,  saunter  up  and 
down  the  library,  putting  to  each  poet  as  I 
meet  him  the  once  dreaded  question,  '  Sir, 
are  you  a  member  of  this  University  ? ' 

But  whilst  I  am  arranging  myself  for 
this  function,  let  me  utilise  the  time  by 
making  two  preliminary  observations  —  the 
first  one  being  that,  as  to-day  is  Sunday, 
only  such  free  libraries  are  open  as  may 
happen  to  be  attached  to  public-houses,  and 


2/6      CAMBRIDGE  AND    THE  POETS. 

I  am  consequently  confined  to  my  own  poor 
shelves,  and  must  be  forgiven  even  though 
I  make  some  palpable  omissions.  The 
second  is  that  I  exclude  from  my  survey 
living  authors.  I  must  do  so ;  their  very 
names  would  excite  controversy  about  a 
subject  which,  when  wisely  handled,  admits 
of  none. 

I  now  pursue  my  inquiry.  That  Chau- 
cer was  a  Cambridge  man  cannot  be  proved. 
It  is  the  better  opinion  that  he  was  (how 
else  should  he  have  known  anything  about 
the  Trumpington  Road  ?),  but  it  is  only  an 
opinion,  and  as  no  one  has  ever  been  found 
reckless  enough  to  assert  that  he  was  an 
Oxford  man,  he  must  be  content  to  '  sit 
out '  this  inquiry  along  with  Shakspeare, 
Webster,  Ford,  Pope,  Cowper,  Burns,  and 
Keats,  no  one  of  whom  ever  kept  his  terms 
at  either  University.  Spenser  is,  of  course, 
the  glory  of  the  Cambridge  Pembroke, 
though  were  the  fellowships  of  that  college 
made  to  depend  upon  passing  a  yearly  ex- 
amination in  the  Faerie  Queene,  to  be  con- 
ducted by  Dean  Church,  there  would  be 
wailing  and  lamentation  within  her  rubi- 
cund walls^  Sir  Thomas  Wyatt  was  at  St. 


CAMBRIDGE  AND    THE  POETS. 

John's,  Fulke  Greville  Lord  Brooke  at  Je- 
sus, Giles  and  Phineas  Fletcher  were  at 
King's,  Herrick  was  first  a/  St.  John's,  but 
migrated  to  the  Hall,  where  he  is  still  reck- 
oned very  pretty  reading,  even  by  boating 
men.  Cowley,  most  precocious  of  poets, 
and  Suckling  were  at  Trinity,  Waller  at 
King's,  Francis  Quarles  was  of  Christ's. 
The  Herbert  family  were  divided,  some 
going  to  Oxford  and  some  to  Cambridge, 
George,  of  course,  falling  to  the  lot  of  Cam- 
bridge. John  Milton's  name  alone  would 
deify  the  University  where  he  pursued  his 
almost  sacred  studies.  Andrew  Marvell, 
a  pleasant  'poet  and  savage  satirist,  was  of 
Trinity.  The  author  of  Hudibras  is  fre- 
quently attributed  to  Cambridge,  but,  on 
being  interrogated,  he  declined  to  name 
his  college  —  always  a  suspicious  circum- 
stance. 

I  must  not  forget  Richard  Crashaw,  of 
Peterhouse.  Willingly  would  I  relieve  the 
intolerable  tedium  of  this  dry  inquiry  by 
transcribing  the  few  lines  of  his  now  be- 
neath my  eye.  But  I  forbear,  and  '  steer 
right  on.' 

Of    dramatists    we    find    Marlowe    (un- 


278       CAMBRIDGE  AND    THE  POETS. 

timelier  death  than  his  was  never,  any) 
at  Corpus  ;  Greene  (I  do  not  lay  much 
stress  on  Greene)  was  both  at  St.  John's 
and  Clare.  Ben  Jonson  was  at  St.  John's, 
so  was  Nash.  John  Fletcher  (whose  claims 
to  be  considered  the  senior  partner  in  his 
well-known  firm  are  simply  paramount) 
was  at  Corpus.  James  Shirley,  the  author 
of  The  Maids'  Revenge  and  of  the  beauti- 
ful lyric  beginning  'The  glories  of  our 
birth  and  state/  in  the  innocence  of  his 
heart  first  went  to  St.  John's  College,  Ox- 
ford, from  whence  he  was  speedily  sent 
down,  for  reasons  which  the  delightful  au- 
thor of  Athena  Oxonienses  must  really  be 
allowed  to  state  for  himself.  'At  the  same 
time  (1612)  Dr.  William  Laud  presiding  at 
that  house,  he  had  a  very  great  affection 
for  Shirley,  especially  for  the  pregnant 
parts  that  were  visible  in  him,  but  then 
having  a  broad  or  large  mole  upon  his  left 
cheek,  which  some  esteemed  a  deformity, 
that  worthy  doctor  would  often  tell  him 
that  he  was  an  unfit  person  to  take  the 
sacred  function  upon  him,  and  should 
never  have  his  consent  to  do  so.'  Thus 
treated,  Shirley  left  Oxford,  that  '  home  of 


CAMBRIDGE  AND    THE  POETS.       279 

lost  causes,'  but  not  apparently  of  large 
moles,  and  came  to  Cambridge,  and  en- 
tered at  St.  Catharine's  Hall,  where,  either 
because  the  authorities  were  -not  amongst 
those  who  esteemed  a  broad  or  large  mole 
upon  the  left  cheek  to  be  a  deformity,  or 
because  a  mole,  more  or  less,  made  no  sort 
of  difference  in  the  personal  appearance 
of  the  college,  or  for  other  good  and  suffi- 
cient reasons,  poor  Shirley  was  allowed, 
without,  I  trust,  being  often  told  of  his 
mole,  to  proceed  to  his  degree  and  to 
Holy  Orders. 

Starting  off  again,  we  find  John  Dryden, 
whose  very  name  is  a  tower  of  strength 
(were  he  to  come  to  life  again  he  would, 
like  Mr.  Brown  of  Calaveras,  '  clean  out 
half  the  town  '),  at  Trinity.  In  this  poet's 
later  life  he  said  he  liked  Oxford  better. 
His  lines  on  this  subject  are  well-known  :  — 

'  Oxford  to  him  a  dearer  name  shall  be 
Than  his  own  Mother-University. 
Thebes  did  his  rude,  unknowing  youth  engage, 
He  chooses  Athens  in  his  riper  age.' 

But  idle  preferences  of  this  sort  are  beyond 
the  scope  of  my  present  inquiry.  After 
Dryden  we  find  Garth  at  Peterhouse  and 


280      CAMBRIDGE  AND    THE  POETS. 

charming  Matthew  Prior  at  John's.  Then 
comes  the  great  name  of  Gray.  Perhaps 
I  ought  not  to  mention  poor  Christopher 
Smart,  who  was  a  Fellow  of  Pembroke,  and 
yet  the  author  of  David,  under  happier 
circumstances,  might  have  conferred  addi- 
tional poetic  lustre,  even  upon  the  college 
of  Spenser.* 

In  the  present  century,  we  find  Bryon 
and  his  bear  at  Trinity,  Coleridge  at  Jesus, 
and  Wordsworth  at  St.  John's.  The  last 
named  poet  was  fully  alive  to  the  honour  of 
belonging  to  the  same  University  as  Milton. 
In  language  not  unworthy  of  Mr.  Trumbull, 
the  well-known  auctioneer  in  Middlemarch, 
he  has  recorded  as  follows  :  — 

'  Among  the  band  of  my  compeers  was  one 
Whom  chance  had  stationed  in  the  very  room 
Honoured  by  Milton's  name.    O  temperate  Bard  ! 
Be  it  confest  that  for  the  first  time  seated 
Within  thy  innocent  lodge  and  oratory, 
One  of  a  festive  circle,  I  poured  out 
Libations,  to  thy  memory  drank,  till  pride 
And  gratitude  grew  dizzy  in  a  brain 
Never  excited  by  the  fumes  of  wine 
Before  that  hour  or  since.'  t 

*  This  passage  was  written  before  Mr.  Browning's 
'  Parleyings  '  had  appeared.  Christopher  is  now  a  '  per- 
son of  importance,'  and  needs  no  apology. 

t  The  Prelude,  p.  55. 


CAMBRIDGE  AND    THE  POETS.      28 1 

I  know  of  no  more  amiable  trait  in  the 
character  of  Cambridge  men  than  their 
willingness  to  admit  having  been  drunk 
once. 

After  the  great  name  of  Wordsworth 
any  other  must  seem  small,  but  I  must, 
before  concluding,  place  on  record  Praed, 
Macaulay,  Kingsley,  and  Calverley. 

A  glorious  Roll-call  indeed  ! 

'  Earth  shows  to  Heaven  the  names  by  thousands  told 

That  crown  her  fame.' 

I 

So  may  Cambridge. 

Oxford  leads  off  with  one  I  could  find  it 
in  my  heart  to  grudge  her,  beautiful  as  she 
is— Sir  Philip  Sidney.  Why,  I  wonder, 
did  he  not  accompany  his  friend  and  fu- 
ture biographer,  Fulke  Greville,  to  Cam- 
bridge ?  As  Dr.  Johnson  once  said  to 
Boswell,  '  Sir,  you  may  wonder  ! '  Sidney 
most  indisputably  was  at  Christchurch. 
Old  George  Chapman,  who  I  suppose  was 
young  once,  was  (I  believe)  at  Oxford, 
though  I  have  known  Cambridge  to  claim 
him.  Lodge  and  Peele  were  at  Oxford,  so 
were  Francis  Beaumont  and  his  brother  Sir 
John.  Philip  Massinger,  Shakerley  Mar- 
mion,  and  John  Marston  are  of  Oxford,  also 


282       CAMBRIDGE  AND   THE  POETS. 

Watson  and  Warner.  Henry  Vaughan  the 
Silurist,  Sir  John  Davies,  George  Sandys, 
Samuel  Daniel,  Dr.  Donne,  Lovelace,  and 
Wither  belong  to  the  sister  University,  so 
did  Dr.  Brady  —  but  Oxford  must  not 
claim  all  the  merit  of  the  metrical  version 
of  the  Psalms,  for  Brady's  colleague,  Dr. 
Nahum  Tate,  was  a  Dublin  man.  Otway 
and  Collins,  Young,  Johnson,  Charles  Wes- 
ley, Southey,  Landor,  Hartley  Coleridge, 
B.eddoes,  Keble,  Isaac  Williams,  Faber, 
and  Clough  are  names  of  which  their  Uni- 
versity may  well  be  proud.  But  surely, 
when  compared  with  the  Cambridge  list, 
a  falling-off  must  be  admitted. 

A  poet  indeed  once  came  into  residence 
at  University  College,  whose  single  name 
—  for  after  all  poets  must  be  weighed  and 
not  counted — would  have  gone  far  to  right 
the  balance,  but  is  Oxford  bold  enough  to 
claim  Shelley  as  her  own  ?  She  sent  him 
down,  not  for  riotous  living,  for  no  purer 
soul  than  his  ever  haunted  her  courts,  but 
for  wanting  to  discuss  with  those  whose 
business  it  was  to  teach  him  questions  of 
high  philosophy.  Had  Shelley  only  gone 
to  Trinity  in  1810  I  feel  sure  wise  and 


CAMBRIDGE  AND    THE   POETS.      283 

witty  old  Dr.  Mansel  would  never  have 
sent  him  down.  Spenser,  Milton,  and 
Shelley  !  What  a  triad  of  immortal  fames 
they  would  have  made.  As  it  is,  we  ex- 
pect Oxford  with  her  accustomed  com- 
posure will  insist  upon  adding  Shelley  to 
her  score  —  but  even  when  she  has  been 
allowed  to  do  so,  she  must  own  herself 
beaten  both  in  men  and  metal. 

But  this  being  so  —  why  was  it  so  ?  It 
is  now  my  turn  to  own  myself  defeated. 
I  cannot  for  the  life  of  me  tell  how  it  hap- 
pened. 


BOOK-BUYING. 

THE  most  distinguished  of  living  Eng- 
lishmen, who,  great  as  he  is  in  many  direc- 
tions, is  perhaps  inherently  more  a  man  of 
letters  than  anything  else,  has  been  over- 
heard mournfully  to  declare  that  there 
were  more  booksellers'  shops  in  his  na- 
tive town  sixty  years  ago  when  he  was  a 
boy  in  it  than  are  to-day  to  be  found  within 
its  boundaries.  And  yet  the  place  '  all  un- 
abashed '  now  boasts  its  bookless  self  a 
city  ! 

Mr.  Gladstone  was,  of  course,  referring 
to  second-hand  bookshops.  Neither  he 
nor  any  other  sensible  man  puts  himself 
out  about  new  books.  When  a  new  book 
is  published,  read  an  old  one,  was  the  ad- 
vice of  a  sound  though  surly  critic.  It  is 
one  of  the  boasts  of  letters  to  have  glori- 
fied the  term  '  second-hand,'  which  other 
crafts  have  '  soiled  to  all  ignoble  use.'  But 


BOOK-BUYING.  285 

why  it  has  been  able  to  do  this  is  obvious. 
All  the  best  books  are  necessarily  second- 
hand. The  writers  of  to-day  need  not 
grumble.  Let  them  '  bide  a  wee.'  If 
their  books  are  worth  anything  they  too 
one  day  will  be  second-hand.  If  their 
books  are  not  worth  anything  there  are 
ancient  trades  still  in  full  operation 
amongst  us  —  the  pastrycooks  and  the 
trunk-makers  —  who  must  have  paper. 

But  is  there  any  substance  in  the  plaint 
that  nobody  now  buys  books,  meaning 
thereby  second-hand  books  ?  The  late 
Mark  Pattison,  who  had  16,000  volumes, 
and  whose  lightest  word  has  therefore 
weight,  once  stated  that  he  had  been  in- 
formed, and  verily  believed,  that  there 
were  men  of  his  own  University  of  Ox- 
ford who,  being  in  uncontrolled  posses- 
sion of  annual  incomes  of  not  less  than 
jC$oo,  thought  they  were  doing  the  thing 
handsomely  if  they  expended  .£50  a  year 
upon  their  libraries.  But  we  are  not 
bound  to  believe  this  unless  we  like. 
There  was  a  touch  of  morosity  about  the 
late  Rector  of  Lincoln  which  led  him  to 
take  gloomy  views  of  men,  particularly 
Oxford  men. 


286  BOOK-BUYING. 

No  doubt  arguments  a  priori  may  read- 
ily be  found  to  support  the  contention  that 
the  habit  of  book-buying  is  on  the  decline. 
I  confess  to  knowing  one  or  two  men,  not 
Oxford  men  either,  but  Cambridge  men 
(and  the  passion  of  Cambridge  for  litera- 
ture is  a  by-word),  who,  on  the  plea  of 
being  pressed  with  business,  or  because, 
they  were  going  to  a  funeral,  have  passed 
a  bookshop  in  a  strange  town  without  so 
much  as  stepping  inside  *  just  to  see 
whether  the  fellow  had  anything.'  But 
painful  as  facts  of  this  sort  necessarily  are, 
any  damaging  inference  we  might  feel  dis- 
posed to  draw  from  them  is  dispelled  by 
a  comparison  of  price-lists.  Compare  a 
bookseller's  catalogue  of  1862  with  one  of 
the  present  year,  and  your  pessimism  is 
washed  away  by  the  tears  which  unre- 
strainedly flow  as  you  see  what  bonnes 
fortunes  you  have  lost.  A  young  book- 
buyer  might  well  turn  out  upon  Primrose 
Hill  and  bemoan  his  youth,  after  compar- 
ing old  catalogues  with  new. 

Nothing    but     American     competition, 
grumble  some  old  stagers. 

Well !  why  not  ?     This  new  battle  for 


BOOK-BUYING.  287 

the  books  is  a  free  fight,  not  a  private 
one,  and  Columbia  has  'joined  in.'  Lower 
prices  are  not  to  be  looked  for.  The  book- 
buyer  of  1900  will  be  glad  to  buy  at  to- 
day's prices.  I  take  pleasure  in  thinking 
he  will  not  be  able  to  do  so.  Good  finds 
grow  scarcer  and  scarcer.  True  it  is  that 
but  a  few  short  weeks  ago  I  picked  up 
(such  is  the  happy  phrase,  most  apt  to  de- 
scribe what  was  indeed  a  '  street  casualty') 
a  copy  of  the  original  edition  of  Endymion 
(Keats's  poem  —  O  subscriber  to  Mudie's  ! 
—  not  Lord  Beaconsfield's  novel)  for  the 
easy  equivalent  of  half-a-crown — but  then 
that  was  one  of  my  lucky  days.  The  enor- 
mous increase  of  booksellers'  catalogues 
and  their  wide  circulation  amongst  the 
trade  has  already  produced  a  hateful  uni- 
formity of  prices.  Go  where  you  will  it 
is  all  the  same  to  the  odd  sixpence.  Time 
was  when  you  could  map  out  the  coun- 
try for  yourself  with  some  hopefulness  of 
plunder.  There  were  districts  where  the 
Elizabethan  dramatists  were  but  slenderly 
protected.  A  raid  into  the  '  bonnie  North 
Countrie '  sent  you  home  again  cheered 
with  chap-books  and  weighted  with  old 


288  BOOK-BUYING. 

pamphlets  of  curious  interest ;  whilst  the 
West  of  England  seldom  failed  to  yield 
a  crop  of  novels.  I  remember  getting  a 
complete  set  6f  the  Bronte  books  in  the 
original  issues  at  Torquay,  I  may  say,  for 
nothing.  Those  days  are  over.  Your 
country  bookseller  is,  in  fact,  more  likely, 
such  tales  does  he  hear  of  London  auc- 
tions, and  such  catalogues  does  he  receive 
by  every  post,  to  exaggerate  the  value  of 
his  wares  than  to  part  with  them  pleas- 
antly, and  as  a  country  bookseller  should, 
'just  to  clear  my  shelves,  you  know,  and 
give  me  a  bit  of  room.'  The  only  com- 
pensation for  this  is  the  catalogues  them- 
selves. You  get  them,  at  least,  for  nothing, 
and  it  cannot  be  denied  that  they  make 
mighty  pretty  reading. 

These  high  prices  tell  their  own  tale, 
and  force  upon  us  the  conviction  that 
there  never  were  so  many  private  libraries 
in  course  of  growth  as  there  are  to-day. 

Libraries  are  not  made ;  they  grow. 
Your  first  two  thousand  volumes  present 
no  difficulty,  and  cost  astonishingly  little 
money.  Given  ^400  and  five  years,  and 
an  ordinary  man  can  in  the  ordinary 


BOOK-BUYING.  289 

course,  without  any  undue  haste  or  put- 
ting any  pressure  upon  his  taste,  surround 
himself  with  this  number  of  books,  all  in 
his  own  language,  and  thenceforward  have 
at  least  one  place  in  the  world  in  which  it 
is  possible  to  be  happy.  But  pride  is  still 
out  of  the  question.  To  be  proud  of  hav- 
ing two  thousand  books  would  be  absurd. 
You  might  as  well  be  proud  of  having  two 
top-coats.  After  your  first  two  thousand 
difficulty  begins,  but  until  you  have  ten 
thousand  volumes  the  less  you  say  about 
your  library  the  better.  Then  you  may 
begin  to  speak. 

It  is  no  doubt  a  pleasant  thing  to  have  a 
library  left  you.  The  present  writer  will 
disclaim  no  such  legacy,  but  hereby  under- 
takes to  accept  it,  however  dusty.  But, 
good  as  it  is  to  inherit  a  library,  it  is  better 
to  collect  one.  Each  volume  then,  how- 
ever lightly  a  stranger's  eye  may  roam 
from  shelf  to  shelf,  has  its  own  individu- 
ality, a  history  of  its  own.  You  remember 
where  you  got  it,  and  how  much  you  gave 
for  it ;  and  your  word  may  safely  be  taken 
for  the  first  of  these  facts,  but  not  for  the 
r  second. 


2QO  BOOK-BUYING. 

The  man  who  has  a  library  of  his  own 
collection  is  able  to  contemplate  himself 
objectively,  and  is  justified  in  believing  in 
his  own  existence.  No  other  man  but  he 
would  have  made  precisely  such  a  combi- 
nation as  his.  Had  he  been  in  any  single 
respect  different  from  what  he  is,  his  li- 
brary, as  it  exists,  never  would  have  existed. 
Therefore,  surely  he  may  exclaim,  as  in  the 
gloaming  he  contemplates  the  backs  of  his 
loved  ones,  'They  are  mine,  and  I  am 
theirs.' 

But  the  eternal  note  of  sadness  will  find 
its  way  even  through  the  keyhole  of  a  li- 
brary. You  turn  some  familiar  page,  of 
Shakspeare  it  may  be,  and  his  '  infinite  va- 
riety/ his  '  multitudinous  mind,'  suggests 
some  new  thought,  and  as  you  are  wonder- 
ing over  it,  you  think  of  Lycidas,  your 
friend,  and  promise  yourself  the  pleasure 
of  having  his  opinion  of  your  discovery  the 
very  next  time  when  by  the  fire  you  two 
'  help  waste  a  sullen  day.'  Or  it  is,  per- 
haps, some  quainter,  tenderer  fancy  that 
engages  your  solitary  attention,  something 
in  Sir  Philip  Sidney  or  Henry  Vaughan, 
and  then  you  turn  to  look  for  Phyllis,  ever 


BOOK-BUYING.  2C)l 

the  best  interpreter  of  love,  human  or 
divine.  Alas !  the  printed  page  grows 
hazy  beneath  a  filmy  eye  as  you  suddenly 
remember  that  Lycidas  is  dead  — '  dead 
ere  his  prime,' — and  that  the  pale  cheek 
of  Phyllis  will  never  again  be  relumined  by 
the  white  light  of  her  pure  enthusiasm. 
And  then  you  fall  to  thinking  of  the  inev- 
itable, and  perhaps,  in  your  present  mood, 
not  unwelcome  hour,  when  the  'ancient 
peace '  of  your  old  friends  will  be  dis- 
turbed, when  rude  hands  will  dislodge 
them  from  their  accustomed  nooks  and 
break  up  their  goodly  company. 

'  Death  bursts  amongst  them  like  a  shell, 
And  «trews  them  over  half  the  town.' 

They  will  form  new  combinations,  lighten 
other  men's  toil,  and  soothe  another's  sor- 
row. Fool  that  I  was  to  call  anything 
mine  ! 


Uniform  ivifb  Obiter  Dicta. 
ETTERS  TO  DEAD  AUTHORS. 

BY  ANDREW   LANG. 

/  Vol.,  Elzevir  i6mo,  Gilt  Top,  $1.00. 


IT  is  a  happy  fancy  of  Mr. 
Lang's  to  unbosom  himself 
of  some  of  the  brightest,  wit- 
tiest and  most  thoughtful  criti- 
cisms of  recent  years  by  writing 
it  directly  to  the  great  dead 
themselves — always  with  thor- 
ough reverence  and  apprecia- 
tion, and  the  most  charming 
regard  for  their  ways  of  thought, 
but  with  perfect  >frankness.  The 
public  thus  gains  at  second 
hand  one  of  the  brightest  collec- 
tions of  literary  estimates  which 
any  contemporary  writer — not 
even  excepting  the  author  ot 
"  Obiter  Dicta  " —  could  have 
given  them.  The  little  Elzevir 
volume,  with  its  page  and  print, 
would  of  itself  have  appealed  to 
many  of  the  dead  authors,  as  it 
will  to  modern  readers. 


CONTENTS. 

To  W.  M.  Thackeray. 

To  Charles  Dickens. 

To  Pierre  de  Ronzard. 

To  Herodotus. 

Epistle  to  Mr.  Alexander  Pope, 

To  Lucien  of  Samosata. 

To  Maitre  Francoys  Rabelais. 

To  Jane  Austen. 

To  Master  Isaak  Walton. 

To  M.   Chapelain. 

To  Sir  John  Manndeville,  Kt. 

To  Alexandre  Dumas. 

To  Theocritus. 

To  Edgar  Allan  Poe. 

To  Sir  Walter  Scott,  Bart. 

To  Eusebius  of  Caesarea. 

To  Percy  Bysshe  Shelley. 

To  Monsieur  de  Moliere. 

To  Robert  Burns. 

To  Omar  Khayyam. 

To  Q.  Horatius  Flaccus. 


"  The  book  is  one  of  the  luxuries  of 
the  literary  taste.  It  is  meant  for  the 
exquisite  palate,  and  is  prepared  by  one 
of  the  •  knowing  '  kind.  It  is  an  aston- 
ishing little  volume." — A^.  Y.  Evening 
Past. 


"  Mr.  Andrew  Lang  is  decidedly  a 
clever  and  dexterous  literary  workman, 
and  we  doubt  if  he  has  ever  done  any- 
thing neater  or  more  finkhe-1  th  n 
these  'Letters  to  Dead  Authors.' " —  Tht 
Christian  Union. 


QBITER  DICTA. 

(FIRST   SERIES.) 


AUGUSTINE   BIRRELL. 


/  Vol.,  Elzevir  i6mo, 
Gilt  Top,  $1.00. 

CONTENTS. 

Carlyle. 

On  the  Alleged  Obscurity  of  Mr. 
Browning's  Poetry. 

Truth-Hunting. 

Actors. 

A  Rogue's  Memoirs. 

The  Via  Media. 

Falstaff. 


"  A  very  dainty  little  book— daintily 
written,  daintily  printed,  and  daintily 
bound.  The  author  has  a  fine  turn  of 
style,  a  very  pretty  wit,  a  solid  and 
manly  vein  of  reflection.  .  .  .  An 
eminently  pleasant  and  companionable 
book.  Open  it  where  we  may,  we  find 
something  to  entertain  and  stimulate, 
to  invite  meditation,  and  provoke  re- 
flection."—  Times. 

"Some  admirably  written  essays. .  .  . 
Amusing  and  brilliant.  .  .  .  The  book 
is  the  book  of  »  highly  cultivated  man, 
with  a  real  gift  of  expression,  a  good 
deal  of  humor,  a  happy  fancy,  an  im- 
aginative respect  for  religion,  and  a 
rather  skeptical  bias." — Spectator. 


"This  brilliant  and  thought-compel- 
ling little  book.  .  .  .  Apart  from  their 
intellectual  grip,  which  we  think  really 
notable,  the  great  charm  of  these  essays 
lies  in  the  fine  urbanity  of  their  satirical 
humor," — Academy. 

"  Each  essay  is  a  gem  of  thought — not 
of  heavy,  ponderous,  didacti:  thought, 
but  of  thought  light,  fanciful,  and  play- 
ful, yet  conveying  much  wisdom," — 
Standard. 

"The  author  is  evidently  a  man  of 
considerable  reading,  with  opinions  of 
his  own,  which  he  can  express  with 
vigor  and  humor.  .  .  .  The  book  is 
very  readable  and  suggestive." — St. 
James's  Gazette. 

"  A  book  to  be  enjoyed  precisely  be- 
cause of  the  irresponsibility  which  its 
clever  author  successfully  affects.  .  .  . 
We  trust  this  is  only  the  first  of  many 
such  books,  for  the  author  of  Obiter 
Dicta  has  it  in  him  to  delight  his  gen- 
eration for  long  years  to  come  with 
writjng  as  little  commonplace  and  as 
abounding  in  point  and  wit  as  any  that 
has  been  seen  in  a  bookseller's  shop 
since  his  favorite  Charles  Lamb  ceased 
to  button-hole  and  fascinate  English 
mankind." — Liverpool  Daily  Post, 

"  Such  work  as  this  needs  no  name 
to  carry  it ;  its  qualifications  appear  on 
the  surface,  and  not  only  solicit,  but 
command  attention  and  hearing.  It  is 
a  book  which  will  interest  and  delight 
all  lovers  of  good  writing,  and  especial- 
ly all  those  who  enjoy  contact  with  a 
fresh,  suggestive,  incisive  thinker," — 
The  Christian  Union. 


"A  collection  of  papers  of  which,  per- 
haps, the  most  obvious  quality  is  its  lit- 
erary quality.  The  book  is  neat,  ap- 
posite, clever,  full  of  quaint  allusions, 
happy  thoughts,  and  apt  unfamiliar  quo- 
tations."— Boston  Advertiser. 


"  The  essays  are  all  cleverly  written. 
There  is  an  air  of  ease  and  restfulness 
about  them  that  is  quite  refreshing."— 
Brooklyn  Times. 


*'  The  book  is  pervaded  by  freshness, 
manliness,  fine  feeling,  and  intellectual 
integrity." — New  York  Times. 

•'Charmingly  written,  and  always 
eminently  readable."  —  Philadelphia. 
Record. 

"The  little  volume  Is  a  delightful  one, 
and  its  essays  are  written  with  great 
charm  of  style  and  winning  frankness. 
The  book  is  full  of  pleasant  and  refined 
reading  tor  all  people  of  cultivated 
tastes. r'  — Boston  Saturday  Evening: 
Gazette. 

"The  tone  and  spirit  of  the  essays  are 
admirable  ;  there  is  no  attempt  at  ped- 
antry, no  painful  display  of  contorted 
wit:  the  essays  resemble  the  careful 
conversation  of  a  cultured  gentleman, 
and  they  are  thoroughly  fresh  and  en- 
tertaining."— Buffalo  Times, 

"The  book  is  remarkable  fora  light- 
ness of  touch  and  vivacity  worthy  of 
the  best  French  writers,  as  well  as  fora 
fundamental  tone  of  good  sense  that  is 
all-English." —  The  Examiner. 

"  The  writer  of  this  volume  represents 
the  best  criticism  of  the  day.  He  would 
apply  his  principles  to  every  art  of  ex- 
pression, and  to  every  habit  of  thinking. 
He  would  have  all  mental  processes 
brought  before  the  reason  for  its  judg- 
ment. Everywhere  is  evinced  a  strong 
artistic  sense.  Consistency  and  sym- 
metry are  insisted  upon  in  the  develop- 
ment and  employment  of  thought.  The 
book  is  wisely  written,  and  it  deserves 
to  be  wisely  read." — Boston  Transcript. 

"  Wit,  tenderness,  delivery,  and  dis- 
cerning criticism  are  combined  in  an  un- 
usual degree,  and  the  letters,  taken  as  a 
croup,  constitute  one  of  the  freshest  and 
most  pleasing  series  of  literary  essays 
printed  for  many  a  day."  —  Boston 
Journal. 

"The  topics  of  these  letters  Indicate  a 
scholarly  study,  and  are  handled  with  a 
vivacity  which,  extending  from  the 
grave  to  the  gay,  makes  the  volume  an 
instructive  and  charming  literary  com- 
panion."— Chicago  Interior. 


QB1TER  DICTA. 

(SECOND  SERIES.) 


BY 


AUGUSTINE    BIRRELL. 


/  Vol.,  Elzevir  i6mo. 
Gilt  Top,  $1.00. 

CONTENTS. 

Milton. 

Pope. 

Johnson. 

Burke. 

The  Muse  of  History. 

Charles  Lamb. 

Emerson. 

The  Office  of  Literature. 

Worn-out  Types. 

Cambridge  and  the  Poets. 

Book-buying. 


The  remarkable  reception  which  was 
accorded  to  the  first  series  of  this  work, 
and  tlie  large  sale  which  it  met  with 
in  all  parts  of  the  country,  almost 
immediately  on  publication,  -juarranls 
the  belief  that  a  still  larger  demand 
will  arise  for  the  second  series.  The 
subjects  treated  of  in  the  second  series 
of  OBITER  DICTA  have  a  permanent 
interest  ;  and  are  such  as  will  draw 
special  attention  in  consequence  of 
many  of  them  having  been  under  recent 
discussion. 


Two  CHARMING  VOLUMES  OF  POETRY. 


AirsfromArcady  and  Elsewhere 

By  H.  C.   BUNNER. 
1   Vol.,    13mo,    Grilt    Top,    $1.35. 


"It  is  not  often  that  we  have  in  our  hands  a  volume  of 
sweeter  or  more  finished  verses.  ...  In  choosing  Love  for  a 
conductor,  who  alone  may  open  the  way  to  Arcady,  the  poet 
indicates  the  theme  on  which  he  sings  best,  and  which  reflects 
at  some  angle,  or  repeats  in  some  strain  the  inspiration  of  the 
great  poetic  and  dramatic  passion  of  life.  His  poems  are 
thrown  together  in  a  delicately  concealed  order,  which  is  j  ^st 
perceptible  enough  to  give  an  impression  of  progress  and 
movement." — The  Independent. 


Ballades  and  Verses  Vain. 

By  ANDREW   LANG. 


1    "Vol.,    13nao,    Grilt    Top,    $1.5O. 


"The  book  is  a  little  treasury  of  refined  thought,  graceful 
verse,  world-philosophy,  quiet  humor,  and  sometimes  a  gentle 
cynicism.  The  versification  is  always  polished,  the  sentiment 
delicate,  and  the  diction  vigorous  and  varied.  It  is  a  wholly 
charming  production." — Boston  Saturday  Evening  Gazette. 


***  For  sale  by  all  booksellers,  or  sent,  post-paid,  upon  receipt  of  price,  by 

CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS,    Publishers, 
743  AND  745  BROADWAY,  NEW  YORK. 


DATE  DUE 


GAYLORD 


PRINTED  IN  U.S.* 


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